Emerging from Obscurity: The Reasons Avril Coleridge-Taylor Warrants to Be Listened To

This talented musician continually bore the pressure of her parent’s legacy. Being the child of the celebrated composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, among the most famous UK musicians of the 1900s, her reputation was shrouded in the deep shadows of the past.

The First Recording

Earlier this year, I sat with these shadows as I made arrangements to produce the inaugural album of the composer’s concerto for piano composed in 1936. With its emotional harmonies, soulful lyricism, and confident beats, Avril’s work will offer audiences deep understanding into how she – a composer during war originating from the early 1900s – conceived of her world as a female composer of color.

Legacy and Reality

But here’s the thing about the past. One needs patience to adapt, to recognize outlines as they really are, to distinguish truth from misinterpretation, and I felt hesitant to address the composer’s background for a while.

I deeply hoped the composer to be her father’s daughter. To some extent, this was true. The rustic British sounds of her father’s impact can be heard in several pieces, such as From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). However, one need only look at the names of her father’s compositions to realize how he viewed himself as not only a standard-bearer of UK romantic tradition as well as a voice of the Black diaspora.

It was here that father and daughter appeared to part ways.

The United States judged Samuel by the mastery of his compositions rather than the his racial background.

Family Background

During his studies at the renowned institution, the composer – the offspring of a Sierra Leonean father and a Caucasian parent – began embracing his background. When the poet of color this literary figure came to London in 1897, the 21-year-old composer eagerly sought him out. He set this literary work into music and the subsequent year used the poet’s words for a stage piece, Dream Lovers. Subsequently arrived the choral composition that made him famous: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Based on Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha, this composition was an global success, notably for the Black community who felt vicarious pride as American society assessed his work by the brilliance of his art as opposed to the colour of his skin.

Activism and Politics

Success did not temper his beliefs. At the turn of the century, he participated in the First Pan African Conference in the UK where he met the African American intellectual WEB Du Bois and witnessed a range of talks, including on the oppression of African people in South Africa. He remained an advocate throughout his life. He sustained relationships with early civil rights leaders including Du Bois and this leader, spoke publicly on ending discrimination, and even discussed issues of racism with the American leader while visiting to the presidential residence in 1904. Regarding his compositions, reminisced Du Bois, “he made his mark so prominently as a composer that it will long be remembered.” He died in 1912, at 37 years old. However, how would the composer have reacted to his offspring’s move to travel to this country in the that decade?

Issues and Stance

“Child of Celebrated Artist shows support to South African policy,” appeared as a heading in the Black American publication Jet magazine. Apartheid “appeared to me the correct approach”, Avril told Jet. Upon further questioning, she qualified her remarks: she was not in favor with apartheid “as a concept” and it “should be allowed to run its course, directed by benevolent residents of every background”. Had Avril been more attuned to her father’s politics, or raised in Jim Crow America, she might have thought twice about the policy. Yet her life had protected her.

Background and Inexperience

“I have a UK passport,” she stated, “and the government agents failed to question me about my race.” Therefore, with her “porcelain-white” skin (as described), she traveled among the Europeans, lifted by their praise for her renowned family member. She delivered a lecture about her family’s work at the Cape Town university and led the South African Broadcasting Corporation Orchestra in Johannesburg, programming the heroic third movement of her concerto, titled: “Dedicated to my Father.” While a confident pianist herself, she avoided playing as the soloist in her work. Instead, she consistently conducted as the conductor; and so the apartheid orchestra played under her baton.

Avril hoped, in her own words, she “could introduce a shift”. However, by that year, the situation collapsed. Once officials learned of her Black ancestry, she had to depart the nation. Her citizenship didn’t protect her, the UK representative urged her to go or risk imprisonment. She went back to the UK, deeply ashamed as the scale of her innocence was realized. “The realization was a difficult one,” she expressed. Increasing her embarrassment was the release in 1955 of her ill-fated Jet interview, a year after her unceremonious exit from the country.

A Common Narrative

Upon contemplating with these shadows, I sensed a familiar story. The story of being British until you’re not – which recalls African-descended soldiers who defended the British in the World War II and lived only to be not given their earned rewards. Along with the Windrush era,