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This talented musician constantly felt the burden of her family reputation. Being the child of the renowned Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, a leading the best-known English musicians of the 1900s, Avril’s identity was enveloped in the long shadows of the past.

The First Recording

Earlier this year, I sat with these memories as I made arrangements to record the inaugural album of Avril’s concerto for piano composed in 1936. Boasting impassioned harmonies, soulful lyricism, and valiant rhythms, Avril’s work will offer audiences deep understanding into how the composer – a composer during war born in 1903 – conceived of her reality as a woman of colour.

Shadows and Truth

However about legacies. One needs patience to adjust, to recognize outlines as they truly exist, to tell reality from misrepresentation, and I was reluctant to address her history for some time.

I earnestly desired her to be following in her father’s footsteps. To some extent, she was. The pastoral English palettes of parental inspiration can be heard in numerous compositions, such as From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). But you only have to examine the titles of her parent’s works to see how he viewed himself as not only a standard-bearer of British Romantic style but a representative of the Black diaspora.

This was where Samuel and Avril began to differ.

White America judged Samuel by the excellence of his music instead of the colour of his skin.

Parental Heritage

While he was studying at the prestigious music college, the composer – the child of a African father and a white English mother – turned toward his background. When the poet of color Paul Laurence Dunbar came to London in that era, the aspiring artist eagerly sought him out. He composed this literary work as a composition and the next year adapted his verses for a musical work, Dream Lovers. This was followed by 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, notably for the Black community who felt indirect honor as white America assessed his work by the quality of his art rather than the his race.

Principles and Actions

Success did not temper his activism. At the turn of the century, he participated in the initial Pan African gathering in London where he met the prominent scholar the renowned Du Bois and saw a range of talks, such as the mistreatment of Black South Africans. He was an activist throughout his life. He kept connections with pioneers of civil rights including the scholar and Booker T Washington, spoke publicly on ending discrimination, and even talked about matters of race with the US President on a trip to the White House in 1904. As for his music, reminisced Du Bois, “he made his mark so notably as a musician that it will long be remembered.” He died in 1912, in his thirties. However, how would the composer have reacted to his offspring’s move to be in South Africa in the mid-20th century?

Controversy and Apartheid

“Offspring of Renowned Musician expresses approval to South African policy,” appeared as a heading in the Black American publication Jet magazine. Apartheid “appeared to me the appropriate course”, she informed Jet. When asked to explain, she revised her statement: she did not support with this policy “in principle” and it “could be left to resolve itself, overseen by well-meaning residents of all races”. Were the composer more in tune to her father’s politics, or from the US under segregation, she may have reconsidered about the policy. Yet her life had shielded her.

Identity and Naivety

“I possess a UK passport,” she stated, “and the authorities did not inquire me about my race.” Thus, with her “fair” complexion (as Jet put it), she traveled among the Europeans, supported by their admiration for her renowned family member. She gave a talk about her parent’s compositions at the educational institution and directed the broadcasting ensemble in the city, programming the inspiring part of her concerto, titled: “In memory of my Father.” Even though a skilled pianist personally, she did not perform as the featured artist in her work. On the contrary, she invariably directed as the leader; and so the orchestra of the era followed her lead.

Avril hoped, in her own words, she “may foster a transformation”. However, by that year, the situation collapsed. When government agents discovered her Black ancestry, she had to depart the nation. Her citizenship offered no defense, the UK representative urged her to go or be jailed. She returned to England, deeply ashamed as the scale of her naivety dawned. “This experience was a difficult one,” she lamented. Increasing her embarrassment was the printing that year of her ill-fated Jet interview, a year after her unceremonious exit from South Africa.

A Common Narrative

While I reflected with these shadows, I felt a familiar story. The account of holding UK citizenship until it’s challenged – that brings to mind African-descended soldiers who defended the UK throughout the World War II and lived only to be refused rightful benefits. And the Windrush generation,