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

Avril Coleridge-Taylor constantly experienced the burden of her family heritage. Being the child of the celebrated composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, one of the most famous British composers of the 1900s, her reputation was cloaked in the deep shadows of the past.

The First Recording

Not long ago, I contemplated these legacies as I made arrangements to produce the inaugural album of her piano concerto from 1936. Featuring impassioned harmonies, expressive melodies, and valiant rhythms, Avril’s work will grant audiences valuable perspective into how she – a wartime composer born in 1903 – imagined her existence as a female composer of color.

Past and Present

But here’s the thing about shadows. It can take a while to adjust, to see shapes as they truly exist, to tell reality from distortion, and I was reluctant to address her history for some time.

I deeply hoped the composer to be following in her father’s footsteps. Partially, this was true. The pastoral English palettes of Samuel’s influence can be detected in numerous compositions, including From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). However, one need only look at the headings of her parent’s works to understand how he viewed himself as not just a standard-bearer of English Romanticism as well as a representative of the African heritage.

It was here that Samuel and Avril appeared to part ways.

White America evaluated Samuel by the brilliance of his art rather than the his racial background.

Parental Heritage

As a student at the prestigious music college, Samuel – the son of a parent from Sierra Leone and a white English mother – started to lean into his heritage. When the poet of color this literary figure came to London in the late 19th century, the aspiring artist was keen to meet him. He composed this literary work to music and the next year adapted his verses for a musical work, Dream Lovers. Then came the choral piece that made him famous: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Inspired by this American writer’s The Song of Hiawatha, Samuel’s Hiawatha was an global success, notably for African Americans who felt vicarious pride as white America assessed his work by the brilliance of his art rather than the his race.

Principles and Actions

Recognition failed to diminish Samuel’s politics. In 1900, he participated in the initial Pan African gathering in the UK where he made the acquaintance of the African American intellectual this influential figure and witnessed a series of speeches, covering the mistreatment of African people in South Africa. He was a campaigner to his final days. He maintained ties with trailblazers for equality including Du Bois and this leader, delivered his own speeches on racial equality, and even engaged in dialogue on issues of racism with the American leader on a trip to the White House in 1904. As for his music, the scholar reflected, “he made his mark so prominently as a musician that it cannot soon be forgotten.” He died in 1912, in his thirties. However, how would the composer have made of his child’s choice to be in South Africa in the mid-20th century?

Conflict and Policy

“Offspring of Renowned Musician gives OK to South African policy,” appeared as a heading in the African American magazine Jet magazine. This policy “struck me as the right policy”, she informed Jet. When asked to explain, she qualified her remarks: she didn’t agree with the system “fundamentally” and it “should be allowed to work itself out, overseen by good-intentioned people of diverse ethnicities”. Were the composer more aligned to her family’s principles, or born in the US under segregation, she might have thought twice about this system. But life had shielded her.

Background and Inexperience

“I possess a British passport,” she said, “and the government agents failed to question me about my race.” So, with her “light” appearance (according to the magazine), she traveled within European circles, lifted by their praise for her late father. She gave a talk about her father’s music at the educational institution and led the national orchestra in Johannesburg, including the bold final section of her Piano Concerto, titled: “In remembrance of my Father.” While a confident pianist herself, she never played as the lead performer in her concerto. Rather, she invariably directed as the maestro; and so the segregated ensemble followed her lead.

Avril hoped, as she stated, she “may foster a change”. Yet in the mid-1950s, circumstances deteriorated. After authorities discovered her Black ancestry, she had to depart the country. Her citizenship didn’t protect her, the diplomatic official advised her to leave or be jailed. She came home, deeply ashamed as the magnitude of her innocence became clear. “The lesson was a hard one,” she stated. Adding to her humiliation was the release in 1955 of her ill-fated Jet interview, a year after her forced leaving from that nation.

A Familiar Story

While I reflected with these shadows, I sensed a recurring theme. The story of holding UK citizenship until it’s revoked – that brings to mind troops of color who defended the UK throughout the global conflict and survived only to be not given their earned rewards. Including those from Windrush,