🔗 Share this article

This talented musician always experienced the weight of her parent’s reputation. As the daughter of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, among the best-known UK composers of the early 20th century, Avril’s name was enveloped in the deep shadows of bygone eras.

An Inaugural Recording

Earlier this year, I sat with these legacies as I got ready to make the world premiere recording of her concerto for piano composed in 1936. Boasting impassioned harmonies, expressive melodies, and bold rhythms, her composition will grant audiences valuable perspective into how she – an artist in conflict originating from the early 1900s – envisioned her existence as a female composer of color.

Legacy and Reality

Yet about the past. It requires time to adjust, to perceive forms as they actually appear, to distinguish truth from misinterpretation, and I was reluctant to face her history for some time.

I deeply hoped the composer to be following in her father’s footsteps. Partially, this was true. The pastoral English palettes of her father’s impact can be heard in several pieces, including From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). But you only have to review the headings of her family’s music to see how he identified as not just a standard-bearer of British Romantic style and also a representative of the Black diaspora.

This was where father and daughter seemed to diverge.

American society assessed the composer by the brilliance of his compositions instead of the his racial background.

Parental Heritage

While he was studying at the Royal College of Music, the composer – the child of a Sierra Leonean father and a Caucasian parent – turned toward his heritage. Once the African American poet the renowned Dunbar arrived in England in the late 19th century, the aspiring artist actively pursued him. He set Dunbar’s African Romances into music and the subsequent year used the poet’s words for an opera, Dream Lovers. Subsequently arrived the choral piece that put Samuel on the map: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Inspired by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha, this composition was an global success, notably for African Americans who felt shared pride as the majority evaluated the composer by the excellence of his compositions rather than the colour of his skin.

Principles and Actions

Fame did not temper his activism. In 1900, he participated in the initial Pan African gathering in England where he met the African American intellectual the renowned Du Bois and observed a variety of discussions, such as the oppression of Black South Africans. He was a campaigner until the end. He maintained ties with pioneers of civil rights such as this intellectual and this leader, delivered his own speeches on racial equality, and even talked about racial problems with President Theodore Roosevelt on a trip to the US capital in that year. In terms of his art, the scholar reflected, “he established his reputation so high as a musician that it will endure.” He died in that year, aged 37. But what would the composer have thought of his offspring’s move to be in South Africa in the mid-20th century?

Conflict and Policy

“Child of Celebrated Artist gives OK to apartheid system,” ran a headline in the community journal Jet magazine. The system “seems to me the correct approach”, Avril told Jet. Upon further questioning, she revised her statement: she didn’t agree with this policy “as a concept” and it “should be allowed to run its course, guided by benevolent people of diverse ethnicities”. Had Avril been more aligned to her family’s principles, or raised in Jim Crow America, she might have thought twice about the policy. Yet her life had sheltered her.

Identity and Naivety

“I hold a British passport,” she said, “and the officials never asked me about my background.” So, with her “fair” skin (according to the magazine), she floated alongside white society, lifted by their acclaim for her renowned family member. She gave a talk about her family’s work at the Cape Town university and led the broadcasting ensemble in that location, programming the inspiring part of her concerto, titled: “In memory of my Father.” While a skilled pianist on her own, she did not perform as the featured artist in her work. Instead, she invariably directed as the conductor; and so the orchestra of the era performed under her direction.

She desired, in her own words, she “might bring a shift”. But by 1954, things fell apart. After authorities learned of her mixed background, she could no longer stay the country. Her citizenship didn’t protect her, the British high commissioner recommended her departure or be jailed. She went back to the UK, deeply ashamed as the extent of her innocence became clear. “This experience was a hard one,” she expressed. Increasing her humiliation was the release in 1955 of her unfortunate magazine feature, a year after her forced leaving from that nation.

A Common Narrative

Upon contemplating with these memories, I felt a known narrative. The story of identifying as British until it’s revoked – that brings to mind Black soldiers who fought on behalf of the English throughout the global conflict and lived only to be denied their due compensation. Along with the Windrush era,