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This talented musician constantly felt the weight of her family reputation. Being the child of the renowned Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, one of the best-known English composers of the turn of the 20th century, her name was shrouded in the long shadows of the past.

A World Premiere

Not long ago, I contemplated these legacies as I made arrangements to record the inaugural album of her 1936 piano concerto. Featuring intense musical themes, heartfelt tunes, and bold rhythms, this piece will provide music lovers fascinating insight into how the composer – a wartime composer born in 1903 – imagined her existence as a female composer of color.

Past and Present

Yet about legacies. One needs patience to acclimate, to see shapes as they really are, to tell reality from misrepresentation, and I felt hesitant to address the composer’s background for a while.

I deeply hoped the composer to be a reflection of her father. Partially, this was true. The idyllic English tones of parental inspiration can be heard in several pieces, including From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). However, one need only look at the headings of her family’s music to realize how he viewed himself as not only a champion of English Romanticism but a representative of the African diaspora.

This was where parent and child began to differ.

White America judged Samuel by the brilliance of his compositions instead of the his ethnicity.

Family Background

As a student at the prestigious music college, her father – the offspring of a parent from Sierra Leone and a British mother – turned toward his heritage. At the time the Black American writer the renowned Dunbar came to London in 1897, the young musician actively pursued him. He composed the poet’s African Romances into music and the subsequent year incorporated his poetry for a stage piece, Dream Lovers. Then came the choral work that made him famous: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Inspired by the poet Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha, the piece was an international hit, especially with the Black community who felt vicarious pride as the majority assessed his work by the excellence of his compositions instead of the his background.

Activism and Politics

Success did not temper Samuel’s politics. At the turn of the century, he was present at the initial Pan African gathering in the UK where he met the prominent scholar WEB Du Bois and observed a range of talks, including on the oppression of African people in South Africa. He remained an advocate throughout his life. He kept connections with early civil rights leaders including the scholar and this leader, delivered his own speeches on ending discrimination, and even discussed racial problems with President Theodore Roosevelt while visiting to the US capital in the early 1900s. Regarding his compositions, reminisced Du Bois, “he established his reputation so notably as a composer that it will endure.” He passed away in 1912, at 37 years old. However, how would Samuel have reacted to his daughter’s decision to travel to the African nation in the that decade?

Conflict and Policy

“Offspring of Renowned Musician gives OK to apartheid system,” appeared as a heading in the community journal Jet magazine. Apartheid “struck me as the right policy”, Avril told Jet. Upon further questioning, she revised her statement: she didn’t agree with apartheid “as a concept” and it “should be allowed to resolve itself, overseen by well-meaning residents of every background”. Were the composer more aligned to her father’s politics, or from Jim Crow America, she could have hesitated about apartheid. But life had sheltered her.

Heritage and Innocence

“I hold a British passport,” she stated, “and the officials never asked me about my ethnicity.” Therefore, with her “porcelain-white” appearance (according to the magazine), she moved among the Europeans, supported by their acclaim for her late father. She gave a talk about her parent’s compositions at the University of Cape Town and conducted the South African Broadcasting Corporation Orchestra in Johannesburg, including the heroic third movement of her Piano Concerto, named: “In remembrance of my Father.” While a skilled pianist herself, she did not perform as the featured artist in her piece. Rather, she invariably directed as the conductor; and so the orchestra of the era followed her lead.

The composer aspired, according to her, she “may foster a transformation”. However, by that year, things fell apart. When government agents discovered her Black ancestry, she could no longer stay the country. Her citizenship didn’t protect her, the British high commissioner urged her to go or be jailed. She came home, feeling great shame as the extent of her inexperience was realized. “The lesson was a difficult one,” she expressed. Adding to her embarrassment was the release in 1955 of her controversial discussion, a year after her sudden departure from that nation.

A Common Narrative

As I sat with these memories, I sensed a recurring theme. The account of identifying as British until it’s revoked – that brings to mind African-descended soldiers who served for the English throughout the second world war and lived only to be not given their earned rewards. Including those from Windrush,