The Mixed Museum follows Samuel Coleridge-Taylor to Swansea
As part of our forthcoming Tracks of a Trailblazer audio series - following in the footsteps of British Black mixed-race composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor - The Mixed Museum team recently travelled to Swansea. In March, Director Dr Chamion Caballero and Freelance Editorial Director Laura Smith visited the town of Morriston, home to the Grade I-listed Tabernacle Chapel where Coleridge-Taylor conducted and judged a music festival over the Christmas of 1902.
TMM's forthcoming audio series: Tracks of a Trailblazer
The Mixed Museum team’s journey to Swansea in South Wales in March began, as usual, as Paddington. But this time museum Director, Dr Chamion Caballero, and Freelance Editorial Director Laura Smith started their exploration of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s travels in WH Smith, the retailer that would have sold travel wares at train stations across the country in the composer’s day.
The pair were on their way to Swansea in South Wales to record the third episode of The Mixed Museum’s upcoming Tracks of a Trailblazer audio series. They were retracing the composer’s steps to the Tabernacle Chapel, an imposing Grade 1 listed building in the community of Morriston to the north of the city, where Coleridge-Taylor spent several days over the Christmas and New Year of 1902.
He was there to judge an eisteddfod – a Welsh musical competition – and to conduct a performance of his most popular work, Hiawatha's Wedding Feast.
For the first time in the series, the team discussed Coleridge-Taylor’s wife Jessie. Chamion discovered Jessie accompanied him on his visit to Tabernacle Chapel along with their infant son Hiawatha. She was also pregnant with their daughter Avril at the time. Avril, who was named Gwendolen in honour of the family’s time in Wales but later changed her name, would go on to become a successful composer in her own right.
On location to help the team understand the history of Morriston and the significance of this visit were Huw Tregelles Williams, organist and former Head of Music at BBC Wales; David Gwyn, former General Secretary of the Tabernacle Chapel; and David Morgan, Chair of the Tabernacle Choir, which was founded in 1876 and is one of the longest-established mixed choirs still performing in Wales.
The three men showed Laura and Chamion around the beautiful interior of the Tabernacle Chapel, with its enormous chandeliers, curved wooden pews and raised balcony space, ending with an organ rendition by Huw of the Welsh hymn 'Blaenwern'. The hymn was written by William Penfro Rowlands, who was precentor (leader of the congregation in song) at the Tabernacle Chapel at the time of Coleridge-Taylor’s visit.
Slideshow: images of TMM's Swansea visit, including interviews with David Gwyn, David Morgans and Huw Tregallis Williams at Tabernacle Chapel.
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor described Welsh people as “the least prejudiced of all white peoples”
Coleridge-Taylor felt a great affinity with Wales, travelling there often throughout his life and describing the Welsh as “the least prejudiced of all white peoples”. This episode will see historian and researcher Rebecca Eversley-Dawes share her insights about the composer’s experiences in Wales and about the birth of a multicultural Wales as workers from across the globe came in search of work in what was fast becoming in what was fast becoming one of the most important coal-producing regions in the world.
Tracks of a Trailblazer always aims to combine rail, music, Black and local history and this episode is no exception. The Swansea show will also explore Coleridge-Taylor’s views on Welsh choirs, the Edwardian concept of the ‘new woman’ and the implementation of a nationally standardised ‘railway time’.
Episode three will also seek to place the Black mixed race composer’s visit in a wider context. It will discuss other Black and minoritised performers at the time, including a Native American woman named Go-Won-Go Mohawk who wrote and starred in her own show (she is introduced to us in episode two by Newton Abbot Museum volunteer Tess Walker), and the Black British and African American actors who appeared in British productions of the wildly successful American novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
Other guest experts exploring Coleridge-Taylor's life, music and train travels throughout the series include Chi-chi Nwanoku, Founder of Chineke! Orchestra; Professor Caroline Bressey of University College London; Nick Roberts of the Museum of Music History; David Francis, CEO, Three Choirs Festival; Simon Carpenter, Volunteer Archivist at the Three Choirs Festival; Richard Ward, Chairman of Newton Abbot District Musical Comedy Society; and Dr Oliver Betts of the National Railway Museum. Doug Devany and Marc Caballero also make voiceover appearances.
Learn more
Read our blogposts about the origins of the project Funding news! Our new project exploring the train travels of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and the team's visit to Gloucester and Newton Abbot in preparation for episodes one and two
Find out about Coleridge-Taylor’s visit to Brighton and his life-changing work, The Song of Hiawatha, in our mini exhibition, A Tremendous Ovation
Watch our short film about Coleridge-Taylor’s 1908 visit to Brighton, featuring original artwork by Artist In Residence, Kinga Markus (YouTube) | Duration: 5:08 minutes