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This talented musician constantly felt the pressure of her father’s reputation. Being the child of the renowned Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, one of the best-known British composers of the early 20th century, Avril’s identity was enveloped in the long shadows of bygone eras.

An Inaugural Recording

In recent months, I contemplated these memories as I prepared to make the inaugural album of her concerto for piano composed in 1936. Boasting impassioned harmonies, soulful lyricism, and bold rhythms, this piece will grant music lovers valuable perspective into how the composer – a composer during war who entered the world in 1903 – conceived of her world as a artist with mixed heritage.

Shadows and Truth

Yet about legacies. It can take a while to adapt, to see shapes as they truly exist, to distinguish truth from distortion, and I was reluctant to confront the composer’s background for a while.

I earnestly desired Avril to be following in her father’s footsteps. In some ways, this was true. The pastoral English palettes of parental inspiration can be heard in several pieces, such as From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). But you only have to look at the names of her father’s compositions to realize how he viewed himself as both a standard-bearer of British Romantic style but a voice of the African diaspora.

It was here that father and daughter seemed to diverge.

American society assessed the composer by the mastery of his art as opposed to the his ethnicity.

Family Background

While he was studying at the prestigious music college, Samuel – the son of a Sierra Leonean father and a British mother – began embracing his heritage. Once the Black American writer this literary figure visited the UK in that era, the young musician eagerly sought him out. He set Dunbar’s African Romances into music and the next year adapted his verses for an opera, Dream Lovers. Subsequently arrived the choral composition that established his reputation: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Drawing from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha, Samuel’s Hiawatha was an international hit, particularly among African Americans who felt shared pride as American society assessed his work by the brilliance of his compositions as opposed to the colour of his skin.

Principles and Actions

Fame did not temper his beliefs. At the turn of the century, he participated in the First Pan African Conference in England where he met the African American intellectual this influential figure and saw a variety of discussions, such as the oppression of African people in South Africa. He was a campaigner until the end. He maintained ties with early civil rights leaders like the scholar and this leader, gave addresses on racial equality, and even talked about issues of racism with President Theodore Roosevelt on a trip to the US capital in that year. As for his music, the scholar reflected, “he made his mark so prominently as a musician that it will long be remembered.” He passed away in the early 20th century, at 37 years old. Yet how might the composer have thought of his child’s choice to travel to the African nation in the that decade?

Controversy and Apartheid

“Child of Celebrated Artist gives OK to South African policy,” declared a title in the African American magazine Jet magazine. The system “appeared to me the right policy”, she informed Jet. When pushed to clarify, she qualified her remarks: she did not support with the system “in principle” and it “could be left to work itself out, directed by well-meaning South Africans of every background”. If Avril had been more attuned to her father’s politics, or born in segregated America, she might have thought twice about apartheid. But life had protected her.

Heritage and Innocence

“I possess a British passport,” she remarked, “and the authorities never asked me about my background.” Therefore, with her “light” complexion (as Jet put it), she floated alongside white society, lifted by their acclaim for her renowned family member. She presented about her father’s music at the University of Cape Town and conducted the South African Broadcasting Corporation Orchestra in that location, including the inspiring part of her concerto, named: “Dedicated to my Father.” Although a skilled pianist personally, she never played as the soloist in her work. Instead, she always led as the maestro; and so the apartheid orchestra followed her lead.

Avril hoped, as she stated, she “may foster a transformation”. However, by that year, circumstances deteriorated. Once officials became aware of her mixed background, she could no longer stay the country. Her UK document offered no defense, the British high commissioner urged her to go or face arrest. She came home, feeling great shame as the extent of her innocence dawned. “This experience was a hard one,” she lamented. Increasing her humiliation was the printing that year of her controversial discussion, a year after her forced leaving from South Africa.

A Recurring Theme

While I reflected with these memories, I perceived a familiar story. The narrative of identifying as British until you’re not – that brings to mind African-descended soldiers who defended the English in the World War II and made it through but were refused rightful benefits. Including those from Windrush,