Stepping from Obscurity: Why Avril Coleridge-Taylor Warrants to Be Listened To

Avril Coleridge-Taylor always bore the burden of her family legacy. As the daughter of the renowned Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, one of the best-known English artists of the 1900s, her identity was shrouded in the lingering obscurity of history.

An Inaugural Recording

In recent months, I contemplated these shadows as I prepared to produce the first-ever recording of her 1936 piano concerto. With its impassioned harmonies, heartfelt tunes, and bold rhythms, her composition will offer audiences deep understanding into how this artist – a composer during war originating from the early 1900s – envisioned her reality as a female composer of color.

Shadows and Truth

Yet about shadows. It can take a while to adjust, to recognize outlines as they actually appear, to distinguish truth from distortion, and I felt hesitant to face the composer’s background for some time.

I deeply hoped Avril to be her father’s daughter. Partially, she was. The rustic British sounds of her father’s impact can be observed in many of her works, including From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). Yet it suffices to examine the headings of her family’s music to understand how he heard himself as both a champion of British Romantic style as well as a voice of the African diaspora.

At this point father and daughter began to differ.

American society judged Samuel by the excellence of his compositions instead of the colour of his skin.

Parental Heritage

As a student at the prestigious music college, Samuel – the son of a parent from Sierra Leone and a British mother – began embracing his African roots. At the time the Black American writer the renowned Dunbar arrived in England in the late 19th century, the young musician actively pursued him. He set this literary work as a composition and the subsequent year used the poet’s words for an opera, Dream Lovers. Then came the choral composition that established his reputation: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Inspired by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha, this composition was an international hit, particularly among Black Americans who felt vicarious pride as the majority judged Samuel by the brilliance of his compositions instead of the colour of his skin.

Activism and Politics

Fame did not temper his activism. At the turn of the century, he participated in the initial Pan African gathering in London where he encountered the African American intellectual WEB Du Bois and saw a range of talks, including on the mistreatment of African people in South Africa. He remained an advocate to his final days. He sustained relationships with early civil rights leaders like Du Bois and Booker T Washington, gave addresses on equality for all, and even talked about racial problems with the US President on a trip to the US capital in 1904. In terms of his art, reminisced Du Bois, “he made his mark so notably as a composer that it will endure.” He succumbed in that year, in his thirties. But what would her father have made of his child’s choice to travel to the African nation in the that decade?

Conflict and Policy

“Child of Celebrated Artist expresses approval to S African Bias,” appeared as a heading in the community journal Jet magazine. Apartheid “appeared to me the correct approach”, she informed Jet. When pushed to clarify, she qualified her remarks: she didn’t agree with this policy “as a concept” and it “ought to be permitted to run its course, guided by well-meaning people of all races”. Were the composer more in tune to her father’s politics, or raised in segregated America, she could have hesitated about apartheid. However, existence had sheltered her.

Heritage and Innocence

“I hold a English document,” she said, “and the government agents never asked me about my ethnicity.” Thus, with her “fair” appearance (according to the magazine), she moved alongside white society, supported by their admiration for her late father. She delivered a lecture about her parent’s compositions at the Cape Town university and directed the broadcasting ensemble in that location, featuring the inspiring part of her composition, titled: “In memory of my Father.” While a confident pianist personally, she did not perform as the featured artist in her piece. Instead, she always led as the maestro; and so the apartheid orchestra played under her baton.

Avril hoped, according to her, she “might bring a shift”. However, by that year, circumstances deteriorated. Once officials learned of her mixed background, she had to depart the country. Her UK document didn’t protect her, the British high commissioner recommended her departure or risk imprisonment. She came home, feeling great shame as the scale of her inexperience dawned. “The realization was a hard one,” she stated. Increasing her embarrassment was the release in 1955 of her controversial discussion, a year after her unceremonious exit from South Africa.

A Familiar Story

As I sat with these shadows, I perceived a known narrative. The narrative of identifying as British until it’s revoked – which recalls Black soldiers who fought on behalf of the UK during the World War II and lived only to be denied their due compensation. Including those from Windrush,