🔗 Share this article

This talented musician continually bore the burden of her family heritage. Being the child of the celebrated composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, one of the most famous English musicians of the turn of the 20th century, her name was enveloped in the lingering obscurity of bygone eras.

The First Recording

In recent months, I sat with these legacies as I made arrangements to record the inaugural album of her 1936 piano concerto. With its emotional harmonies, soulful lyricism, and bold rhythms, this piece will grant new listeners fascinating insight into how this artist – an artist in conflict who entered the world in 1903 – envisioned her reality as a woman of colour.

Past and Present

Yet about shadows. One needs patience to adjust, to see shapes as they actually appear, to separate fact from distortion, and I felt hesitant to face Avril’s past for a while.

I had so wanted Avril to be her father’s daughter. In some ways, she was. The pastoral English palettes of Samuel’s influence can be observed in many of her works, for example From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). However, one need only examine the names of her parent’s works to see how he identified as not just a standard-bearer of UK romantic tradition and also a voice of the African heritage.

At this point parent and child seemed to diverge.

American society assessed the composer by the brilliance of his compositions rather than the colour of his skin.

Samuel’s African Roots

While he was studying at the Royal College of Music, her father – the child of a Sierra Leonean father and a Caucasian parent – started to lean into his heritage. At the time the Black American writer this literary figure came to London in 1897, the 21-year-old composer eagerly sought him out. He composed this literary work into music and the following year incorporated his poetry for an opera, Dream Lovers. Subsequently arrived the choral composition that made him famous: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Inspired by this American writer’s The Song of Hiawatha, this composition was an international hit, especially with the Black community who felt vicarious pride as white America judged Samuel by the brilliance of his art instead of the his background.

Advocacy and Beliefs

Success did not temper his activism. During that period, he was present at the initial Pan African gathering in the UK where he met the Black American thinker this influential figure and witnessed a range of talks, including on the subjugation of Black South Africans. He remained an advocate throughout his life. He kept connections with early civil rights leaders including this intellectual and Booker T Washington, delivered his own speeches on racial equality, and even discussed issues of racism with President Theodore Roosevelt on a trip to the White House in that year. Regarding his compositions, reminisced Du Bois, “he wrote his name so notably as a composer that it will endure.” He passed away in the early 20th century, in his thirties. Yet how might her father have thought of his child’s choice to work in this country in the mid-20th century?

Controversy and Apartheid

“Child of Celebrated Artist expresses approval to South African policy,” ran a headline in the community journal Jet magazine. This policy “struck me as the correct approach”, she informed Jet. When pushed to clarify, she revised her statement: she was not in favor with this policy “in principle” and it “could be left to work itself out, directed by well-meaning South Africans of diverse ethnicities”. If Avril had been more attuned to her parent’s beliefs, or from the US under segregation, she might have thought twice about this system. Yet her life had sheltered her.

Heritage and Innocence

“I possess a British passport,” she stated, “and the authorities did not inquire me about my background.” Therefore, with her “porcelain-white” skin (according to the magazine), she floated among the Europeans, supported by their praise for her deceased parent. She presented about her parent’s compositions at the Cape Town university and led the national orchestra in the city, programming the heroic third movement of her composition, subtitled: “In memory of my Father.” Although a skilled pianist personally, she never played as the featured artist in her concerto. Rather, she always led as the leader; and so the apartheid orchestra followed her lead.

She desired, according to her, she “could introduce a transformation”. However, by that year, things fell apart. After authorities became aware of her Black ancestry, she had to depart the land. Her British passport failed to safeguard her, the UK representative urged her to go or face arrest. She returned to England, deeply ashamed as the scale of her naivety was realized. “The realization was a hard one,” she expressed. Increasing her embarrassment was the printing that year of her unfortunate magazine feature, a year after her unceremonious exit from that nation.

A Recurring Theme

While I reflected with these shadows, I sensed a known narrative. The narrative of holding UK citizenship until it’s challenged – which recalls African-descended soldiers who fought on behalf of the British throughout the global conflict and lived only to be not given their earned rewards. And the Windrush generation,