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This talented musician constantly experienced the weight of her parent’s legacy. Being the child of the renowned Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, a leading the prominent British musicians of the turn of the 20th century, Avril’s identity was cloaked in the deep shadows of bygone eras.

An Inaugural Recording

Not long ago, I sat with these memories as I made arrangements to make the world premiere recording of Avril’s piano concerto from 1936. Boasting intense musical themes, soulful lyricism, and confident beats, this piece will grant new listeners fascinating insight into how the composer – a wartime composer originating from the early 1900s – conceived of her existence as a female composer of color.

Past and Present

However about the past. It can take a while to acclimate, to recognize outlines as they actually appear, to separate fact from distortion, and I felt hesitant to address Avril’s past for a period.

I had so wanted Avril to be her father’s daughter. To some extent, she was. The rustic British sounds of Samuel’s influence can be heard in many of her works, for example From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). Yet it suffices to look at the titles of her family’s music to understand how he identified as not just a standard-bearer of English Romanticism and also a voice of the Black diaspora.

At this point parent and child seemed to diverge.

White America evaluated Samuel by the excellence of his compositions rather than the his ethnicity.

Parental Heritage

While he was studying at the renowned institution, the composer – the offspring of a Sierra Leonean father and a white English mother – began embracing his background. Once the Black American writer the renowned Dunbar came to London in that era, the 21-year-old composer eagerly sought him out. He set Dunbar’s African Romances to music and the next year used the poet’s words for a musical work, 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, notably for the Black community who felt indirect honor as white America evaluated the composer by the excellence of his compositions as opposed to the his background.

Activism and Politics

Recognition did not temper Samuel’s politics. At the turn of the century, he participated in the initial Pan African gathering in London where he encountered the Black American thinker WEB Du Bois and observed a variety of discussions, such as the mistreatment of the Black community there. He remained an advocate throughout his life. He sustained relationships with early civil rights leaders including Du Bois and the educator Washington, delivered his own speeches on racial equality, and even discussed issues of racism with the American leader during an invitation to the US capital in the early 1900s. As for his music, the scholar reflected, “he made his mark so notably as a creative artist that it will endure.” He succumbed in 1912, aged 37. Yet how might her father have made of his child’s choice to travel to the African nation in the 1950s?

Controversy and Apartheid

“Daughter of Famous Composer gives OK to South African policy,” appeared as a heading in the community journal Jet magazine. The system “struck me as the correct approach”, Avril told Jet. When pushed to clarify, she qualified her remarks: she didn’t agree with this policy “fundamentally” and it “could be left to resolve itself, directed by good-intentioned residents of all races”. Had Avril been more aligned to her father’s politics, or raised in Jim Crow America, she could have hesitated about this system. But life had protected her.

Background and Inexperience

“I have a UK passport,” she said, “and the government agents failed to question me about my background.” So, with her “light” complexion (as described), she traveled among the Europeans, lifted by their acclaim for her renowned family member. She presented about her father’s music at the Cape Town university and led the national orchestra in the city, including the inspiring part of her composition, named: “Dedicated to my Father.” Even though a confident pianist herself, she never played as the lead performer in her concerto. Rather, she invariably directed as the conductor; and so the apartheid orchestra performed under her direction.

The composer aspired, according to her, she “might bring a transformation”. However, by that year, the situation collapsed. Once officials learned of her Black ancestry, she had to depart the land. Her UK document failed to safeguard her, the British high commissioner advised her to leave or be jailed. She came home, embarrassed as the scale of her inexperience was realized. “The lesson was a painful one,” she stated. Increasing her embarrassment was the 1955 publication of her unfortunate magazine feature, a year after her forced leaving from South Africa.

A Familiar Story

As I sat with these memories, I felt a recurring theme. The narrative of holding UK citizenship until you’re not – that brings to mind troops of color who defended the English throughout the World War II and lived only to be not given their earned rewards. And the Windrush generation,