Out of Darkness: The Reasons Avril Coleridge-Taylor Warrants to Be Heard

This talented musician always felt the burden of her family reputation. Being the child of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, a leading the prominent English artists of the early 20th century, Avril’s identity was shrouded in the lingering obscurity of the past.

An Inaugural Recording

Earlier this year, I reflected on these shadows as I made arrangements to produce the first-ever recording of Avril’s piano concerto from 1936. With its emotional harmonies, soulful lyricism, and valiant rhythms, this piece will grant new listeners valuable perspective into how this artist – a composer during war born in 1903 – envisioned her reality as a woman of colour.

Legacy and Reality

However about shadows. One needs patience to adapt, to see shapes as they really are, to tell reality from misinterpretation, and I felt hesitant to address Avril’s past for some time.

I had so wanted Avril to be her father’s daughter. Partially, she was. The idyllic English tones of Samuel’s influence can be observed in numerous compositions, for example From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). Yet it suffices to look at the titles of her family’s music to understand how he identified as not just a standard-bearer of English Romanticism as well as a representative of the Black diaspora.

At this point father and daughter appeared to part ways.

White America assessed the composer by the excellence of his compositions rather than the his racial background.

Samuel’s African Roots

As a student at the Royal College of Music, her father – the child of a parent from Sierra Leone and a white English mother – started to lean into his heritage. When the poet of color the renowned Dunbar came to London in that era, the young musician eagerly sought him out. He set the poet’s African Romances into music and the following year incorporated his poetry for an opera, Dream Lovers. Subsequently arrived the choral piece that made him famous: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Based on the poet Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha, Samuel’s Hiawatha was an international hit, notably for Black Americans who felt vicarious pride as the majority evaluated the composer by the brilliance of his compositions rather than the colour of his skin.

Principles and Actions

Fame failed to diminish Samuel’s politics. During that period, he was present at the First Pan African Conference in the UK where he encountered the prominent scholar WEB Du Bois and saw a series of speeches, covering the subjugation of Black South Africans. He was a campaigner to his final days. He sustained relationships with trailblazers for equality such as Du Bois and this leader, gave addresses on ending discrimination, and even talked about issues of racism with President Theodore Roosevelt while visiting to the US capital in the early 1900s. In terms of his art, reminisced Du Bois, “he wrote his name so notably as a composer that it will endure.” He passed away in the early 20th century, in his thirties. However, how would her father have thought of his daughter’s decision to travel to the African nation in the mid-20th century?

Issues and Stance

“Daughter of Famous Composer gives OK to South African policy,” ran a headline in the community journal Jet magazine. This policy “struck me as the correct approach”, the composer stated Jet. When pushed to clarify, she qualified her remarks: she didn’t agree with the system “in principle” and it “could be left to resolve itself, overseen by well-meaning South Africans of every background”. If Avril had been more attuned to her family’s principles, or born in Jim Crow America, she could have hesitated about apartheid. Yet her life had shielded her.

Background and Inexperience

“I hold a English document,” she said, “and the officials failed to question me about my race.” So, with her “porcelain-white” complexion (as Jet put it), she floated within European circles, supported by their admiration for her renowned family member. She gave a talk about her father’s music at the Cape Town university and directed the broadcasting ensemble in the city, programming the heroic third movement of her concerto, named: “Dedicated to my Father.” Although a confident pianist on her own, she did not perform as the soloist in her work. Instead, she always led as the maestro; and so the segregated ensemble followed her lead.

She desired, as she stated, she “might bring a change”. But by 1954, circumstances deteriorated. Once officials became aware of her African heritage, she was forced to leave the country. Her UK document didn’t protect her, the diplomatic official advised her to leave or risk imprisonment. She returned to England, feeling great shame as the magnitude of her innocence dawned. “This experience was a painful one,” she expressed. Compounding her disgrace was the release in 1955 of her controversial discussion, a year after her sudden departure from the country.

A Familiar Story

As I sat with these shadows, I sensed a familiar story. The narrative of identifying as British until it’s challenged – that brings to mind troops of color who fought on behalf of the English in the World War II and survived only to be refused rightful benefits. And the Windrush generation,