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This talented musician continually experienced the pressure of her family heritage. As the daughter of the celebrated composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, among the best-known British composers of the 1900s, Avril’s identity was cloaked in the deep shadows of bygone eras.

A World Premiere

In recent months, I sat with these memories as I got ready to make the first-ever recording of Avril’s concerto for piano composed in 1936. Boasting emotional harmonies, soulful lyricism, and bold rhythms, this piece will grant audiences fascinating insight into how this artist – a wartime composer born in 1903 – conceived of her reality as a woman of colour.

Shadows and Truth

Yet about the past. One needs patience to adapt, to recognize outlines as they truly exist, to separate fact from misinterpretation, and I had been afraid to confront Avril’s past for a period.

I deeply hoped her to be her father’s daughter. In some ways, she was. The rustic British sounds of Samuel’s influence can be detected in several pieces, for example From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). Yet it suffices to examine the titles of her family’s music to understand how he identified as not just a standard-bearer of UK romantic tradition and also a representative of the African diaspora.

This was where father and daughter appeared to part ways.

White America evaluated Samuel by the mastery of his art rather than the his racial background.

Parental Heritage

During his studies at the Royal College of Music, her father – the son of a African father and a white English mother – started to lean into his African roots. Once the poet of color this literary figure visited the UK in the late 19th century, the aspiring artist was keen to meet him. He composed Dunbar’s African Romances into music and the subsequent year adapted his verses for a stage piece, Dream Lovers. Subsequently arrived the choral composition that put Samuel on the map: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Based on this American writer’s The Song of Hiawatha, the piece was an international hit, especially with Black Americans who felt indirect honor as American society assessed his work by the brilliance of his music instead of the colour of his skin.

Advocacy and Beliefs

Success did not temper his activism. During that period, he participated in the First Pan African Conference in the UK where he met the Black American thinker the renowned Du Bois and saw a variety of discussions, such as the oppression of the Black community there. He was an activist throughout his life. He kept connections with early civil rights leaders including this intellectual and the educator Washington, delivered his own speeches on racial equality, and even discussed racial problems with President Theodore Roosevelt on a trip to the White House in the early 1900s. As for his music, reminisced Du Bois, “he wrote his name so notably as a composer that it will long be remembered.” He passed away in 1912, at 37 years old. But what would Samuel have thought of his daughter’s decision to travel to this country in the mid-20th century?

Issues and Stance

“Child of Celebrated Artist expresses approval to apartheid system,” ran a headline in the community journal Jet magazine. This policy “appeared to me the right policy”, she informed Jet. When asked to explain, she revised her statement: she did not support with the system “in principle” and it “should be allowed to resolve itself, guided by well-meaning people of every background”. Were the composer more attuned to her family’s principles, or born in the US under segregation, she may have reconsidered about this system. However, existence had shielded her.

Identity and Naivety

“I hold a English document,” she stated, “and the government agents never asked me about my ethnicity.” So, with her “porcelain-white” skin (according to the magazine), she moved within European circles, buoyed up by their admiration for her deceased parent. She delivered a lecture about her father’s music at the Cape Town university and conducted the South African Broadcasting Corporation Orchestra in the city, featuring the bold final section of her composition, named: “Dedicated to my Father.” While a accomplished player personally, she avoided playing as the soloist in her work. Rather, she always led as the maestro; and so the segregated ensemble performed under her direction.

The composer aspired, as she stated, she “may foster a change”. However, by that year, the situation collapsed. After authorities became aware of her Black ancestry, she could no longer stay the nation. Her British passport offered no defense, the UK representative recommended her departure or be jailed. She came home, feeling great shame as the scale of her inexperience became clear. “This experience was a hard one,” she lamented. Adding to her disgrace was the 1955 publication of her ill-fated Jet interview, a year after her unceremonious exit from the country.

A Common Narrative

Upon contemplating with these memories, I felt a known narrative. The story of holding UK citizenship until you’re not – that brings to mind African-descended soldiers who served for the English in the World War II and lived only to be not given their earned rewards. And the Windrush generation,