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This talented musician constantly experienced the weight of her family heritage. As the daughter of the celebrated composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, one of the prominent English composers of the 1900s, the composer’s identity was shrouded in the long shadows of the past.

The First Recording

In recent months, I sat with these legacies as I made arrangements to produce the inaugural album of Avril’s piano concerto from 1936. Boasting emotional harmonies, heartfelt tunes, and valiant rhythms, Avril’s work will grant new listeners deep understanding into how the composer – a wartime composer born in 1903 – envisioned her reality as a woman of colour.

Past and Present

Yet about the past. It can take a while to acclimate, to see shapes as they really are, to distinguish truth from distortion, and I had been afraid to confront her history for some time.

I earnestly desired the composer to be following in her father’s footsteps. In some ways, she was. The pastoral English palettes of her father’s impact can be detected in many of her works, including From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). But you only have to review the names of her family’s music to see how he heard himself as not just a flag bearer of English Romanticism as well as a representative of the African heritage.

At this point father and daughter seemed to diverge.

White America assessed the composer by the brilliance of his compositions instead of the colour of his skin.

Family Background

During his studies at the Royal College of Music, the composer – the child of a parent from Sierra Leone and a white English mother – turned toward his African roots. When the poet of color Paul Laurence Dunbar came to London in 1897, the 21-year-old composer was keen to meet him. He composed the poet’s African Romances into music and the following year adapted his verses for a stage piece, Dream Lovers. Then came the choral piece that established his reputation: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Drawing from this American writer’s The Song of Hiawatha, this composition was an international hit, notably for African Americans who felt shared pride as white America assessed his work by the excellence of his compositions instead of the his race.

Principles and Actions

Success did not temper Samuel’s politics. At the turn of the century, he was present at the First Pan African Conference in London where he met the prominent scholar the renowned Du Bois and observed a variety of discussions, covering the subjugation of the Black community there. He was an activist until the end. He sustained relationships with early civil rights leaders such as the scholar and the educator Washington, delivered his own speeches on ending discrimination, and even discussed matters of race with President Theodore Roosevelt on a trip to the US capital in 1904. As for his music, Du Bois recalled, “he wrote his name so high as a creative artist that it cannot soon be forgotten.” He passed away in the early 20th century, aged 37. But what would the composer have thought of his offspring’s move to travel to South Africa in the mid-20th century?

Issues and Stance

“Daughter of Famous Composer expresses approval to S African Bias,” declared a title in the community journal Jet magazine. This policy “struck me as the correct approach”, Avril told Jet. When pushed to clarify, she backtracked: she did not support with the system “fundamentally” and it “ought to be permitted to resolve itself, guided by benevolent South Africans of diverse ethnicities”. Were the composer more aligned to her parent’s beliefs, or raised in segregated America, she might have thought twice about this system. However, existence had shielded her.

Identity and Naivety

“I hold a British passport,” she stated, “and the government agents did not inquire me about my background.” Therefore, with her “light” skin (according to the magazine), she traveled within European circles, buoyed up by their admiration for her late father. She presented about her parent’s compositions at the educational institution and led the national orchestra in Johannesburg, programming the heroic third movement of her Piano Concerto, named: “Dedicated to my Father.” Although a skilled pianist herself, she never played as the soloist in her piece. On the contrary, she invariably directed as the conductor; and so the apartheid orchestra followed her lead.

She desired, according to her, she “may foster a shift”. Yet in the mid-1950s, circumstances deteriorated. After authorities learned of her Black ancestry, she could no longer stay the country. Her citizenship offered no defense, the British high commissioner recommended her departure or face arrest. She returned to England, deeply ashamed as the scale of her innocence was realized. “The realization was a hard one,” she expressed. Adding to her disgrace was the release in 1955 of her ill-fated Jet interview, a year after her forced leaving from South Africa.

A Common Narrative

As I sat with these legacies, I perceived a familiar story. The narrative of holding UK citizenship until it’s challenged – which recalls troops of color who served for the British throughout the global conflict and survived only to be denied their due compensation. And the Windrush generation,