Samuel
Coleridge Taylor was born in Holban, London,
on 15th August, 1875. His father, Daniel Taylor, came to England from
Sierra Leone to study medicine. After graduating he found his race
was a barrier to maintaining a medical practice in England. He therefore
decided to return to Sierra Leone, soon after Samuel was born.
Samuel
was raised by his mother, Alice Taylor. Named after the poet Samuel
Coleridge, he took a keen interest in music and at the age of
15 applied to enter the Royal College of Music (RCM). Sir George Grove,
the principal of the RCM, originally said no as he feared other students
might complain about having to study with a black man.
In
1896 he met Paul Laurence Dunbar. The son of a former slave,
Dunbar had written a great deal of poetry about Africa.
He decided to set some of Dunbar's poems to music and African
Romances was published in 1897.
Edward
Elgar, Britain's leading composer, was very impressed with Samuel
Coleridge Taylor's work. He wrote that he was "far and away the
cleverest fellow amongst the young men" in the country. This
was reinforced by the first performance of Hiawatha's
Wedding Feast (1899). It was an immediate success and for
the next ten years was the country's most popular English choral-orchestral
work. This was followed by Ethiopia Saluting
the Colours (1902), Four African
Dances (1902) and Twenty-Four
Negro Melodies (1904).
Samuel
Coleridge Taylor
was a leading exponent
of Pan-Africanism, which emphasized the importance of a shared African
heritage. Along with his friend Duse Mohammed, he founded The
African and Orient Review, a Pan-Africanist newspaper in
London. In 1904 he wrote about his work
Twenty-Four
Negro Melodies:
"What Brahms has done for the Hungarian folk music, Dvorak for
the Bohemian, and Grieg for the Norwegian, I have tried to do for
these Negro Melodies."
While
living in Croydon he experienced a great deal of racial prejudice.
Samuel
Coleridge Taylor's white
wife (Jessie Walmisley) was also a target of abuse when she was out
walking with her husband. His daughter later reported that gangs of
local youths would often make comments about the colour of his skin:
"When he saw them approaching along the street he held my hand
more tightly, gripping it until it almost hurt."
Samuel
Coleridge Taylor
was unable to survive on his royalties and in 1903 he became professor
of composition at Trinity College of Music in London.
He also worked as a conductor and several times toured the United
States. After reading The Souls of Black
Folk by William
Du Bois he took
a keen interest in politics. While in America he met and had discussions
with Booker
T. Washington and
Theodore
Roosevelt. In
1906 he gave concerts in several cities including New
York, Boston, St
Louis,
Detroit,
Pittsburgh,
Washington
and Chicago.
Samuel
Coleridge Taylor
died of pneumonia on 1st September, 1912. His two children, Hiawatha
and Avril, both had distinguished careers as composers and conductors.
(1)
Samuel Coleridge Taylor, letter
to Andrew Hilyer (14th September, 1904)
As for the prejudice,
I am well prepared for it. Surely that which you and many others
have lived in for so many years will not quite kill me. I am a great
believer in my race, and I never lose an opportunity of letting
my white friends here know it. Please don't make any arrangements
to wrap me in cotton-wool.
(2)
Samuel Coleridge Taylor, programme
notes for the production of Twenty-Four Negro Melodies (1904)
What Brahms has done
for the Hungarian folk music, Dvorak for the Bohemian, and Grieg
for the Norwegian, I have tried to do for these Negro Melodies.
(3)
In
February, 1912, Samuel Coleridge Taylor, read about racist remarks
made by a visiting lecturer at the Putney Debating Society. A letter
of complaint was published in the Croydon Guardian on 10th
February, 1912.
It is amazing that grown-up,
and presumably educated people, can listen to such primitive and
ignorant nonsense-mongers, who are men without vision, utterly incapable
of penetrating beneath the surface of things
There is an appalling
amount of ignorance amongst English people regarding the Negro and
his doings. Personally, I consider myself the equal of any white
man who ever lived, and no one could change me in that respect;
on the other hand, no man reverences worth more than I, irrespective
of colour and creed. May I further remind the lecturer that really
great people always see the best in others; it is the little man
who looks for the worst - and finds it.
It was an arrogant 'little'
white man who dared to say to the great Dumas, 'and I hear you actually
have negro blood in you!' 'Yes', said the witty writer; 'My father
was a Mulatto, his father a Negro, and his father a monkey. My ancestry
begins where yours ends!' Somehow I always manage to remember that
wonderful answer when I meet a certain type of white man (a type,
thank goodness! as far removed from the best as the Poles from each
other) and the remembrance makes me feel quite happy- wickedly happy,
in fact!'
(4)
Samuel
Coleridge Taylor, African Times and Orient Review (July,
1912)
There is, of course, a large section of the British people
interested in the coloured
races; but it is, generally speaking, a commercial interest only.
Some of these may possibly be interested in the aims and desires
of the coloured peoples; but, taking them on a whole, I fancy one
accomplished fact carries far more weight than a thousand aims and
desires, regrettable though it may be.
Therefore, it is imperative
that this venture be heartily supported by the coloured people themselves,
so that it shall be absolutely independent of the whites as regards
circulation. Such independence will probably speak to the average
Britisher far more than anything else, and will ultimately arouse
his attention and interest - even to his support.
(5)
Blyden
Jackson, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1969)
American Negroes
who were born in the earlier years of this century grew up in black
communities where the name of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was as well
known then as now are such names as Martin Luther King, Jr. and
Malcolm X. Gentle as he was in manner, refined as was his calling,
he was still a fierce apostle of human liberty and a crusader for
the rights of man. He was a parable for the black consciousness
of our present time.
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