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This talented musician continually felt the weight of her family reputation. As the daughter of the celebrated composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, a leading the most famous UK composers of the turn of the 20th century, Avril’s identity was shrouded in the lingering obscurity of the past.

An Inaugural Recording

Earlier this year, I reflected on these legacies as I prepared to produce the inaugural album of the composer’s 1936 piano concerto. Boasting intense musical themes, soulful lyricism, and valiant rhythms, Avril’s work will offer music lovers valuable perspective into how she – a composer during war who entered the world in 1903 – envisioned her world as a woman of colour.

Shadows and Truth

However about shadows. It requires time to adapt, to recognize outlines as they really are, to distinguish truth from distortion, and I had been afraid to confront Avril’s past for a while.

I earnestly desired her to be a reflection of her father. Partially, she was. The rustic British sounds of Samuel’s influence can be detected in several pieces, including From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). However, one need only examine the titles of her parent’s works to realize how he viewed himself as not just a flag bearer of UK romantic tradition but a representative of the Black diaspora.

This was where parent and child appeared to part ways.

American society evaluated Samuel by the mastery of his music instead of the colour of his skin.

Samuel’s African Roots

As a student at the renowned institution, the composer – the child of a Sierra Leonean father and a British mother – began embracing his African roots. Once the Black American writer this literary figure came to London in the late 19th century, the 21-year-old composer eagerly sought him out. He adapted Dunbar’s African Romances as a composition and the next year adapted his verses for a stage piece, Dream Lovers. Then came the choral composition that made him famous: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Drawing from the poet Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha, the piece was an worldwide sensation, notably for the Black community who felt indirect honor as white America assessed his work by the excellence of his art rather than the his background.

Activism and Politics

Success did not reduce his activism. In 1900, he participated in the pioneering African conference in the UK where he made the acquaintance of the African American intellectual this influential figure and observed a series of speeches, covering the mistreatment of Black South Africans. He remained an advocate throughout his life. He sustained relationships with pioneers of civil rights including Du Bois and the educator Washington, spoke publicly on ending discrimination, and even engaged in dialogue on issues of racism with the US President during an invitation to the presidential residence in the early 1900s. As for his music, reminisced Du Bois, “he wrote his name so high as a creative artist that it cannot soon be forgotten.” He died in 1912, at 37 years old. However, how would the composer have made of his offspring’s move to be in South Africa in the that decade?

Issues and Stance

“Offspring of Renowned Musician shows support to South African policy,” declared a title in the African American magazine Jet magazine. This policy “struck me as the appropriate course”, the composer stated Jet. When asked to explain, she backtracked: she did not support with the system “as a concept” and it “should be allowed to resolve itself, overseen by well-meaning people of every background”. If Avril had been more aligned to her father’s politics, or born in the US under segregation, she might have thought twice about apartheid. But life had sheltered her.

Heritage and Innocence

“I have a British passport,” she remarked, “and the officials never asked me about my background.” So, with her “light” skin (as Jet put it), she floated among the Europeans, lifted by their praise for her late father. She presented about her father’s music at the Cape Town university and conducted the national orchestra in Johannesburg, programming the heroic third movement of her concerto, titled: “Dedicated to my Father.” Even though a confident pianist herself, she did not perform as the featured artist in her concerto. Rather, she invariably directed as the leader; and so the segregated ensemble followed her lead.

She desired, as she stated, she “might bring a change”. Yet in the mid-1950s, the situation collapsed. After authorities discovered her mixed background, she could no longer stay the land. Her British passport didn’t protect her, the British high commissioner recommended her departure or risk imprisonment. She went back to the UK, feeling great shame as the scale of her innocence was realized. “The realization was a difficult one,” she stated. Compounding her humiliation was the release in 1955 of her unfortunate magazine feature, a year after her sudden departure from that nation.

A Common Narrative

Upon contemplating with these legacies, I perceived a known narrative. The account of identifying as British until it’s revoked – one that calls to mind troops of color who defended the UK during the global conflict and made it through but were denied their due compensation. Including those from Windrush,