🔗 Share this article

This talented musician constantly felt the weight of her family reputation. As the offspring of the celebrated composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, among the best-known English artists of the early 20th century, her identity was shrouded in the lingering obscurity of bygone eras.

The First Recording

In recent months, I sat with these shadows as I prepared to produce the world premiere recording of the composer’s piano concerto from 1936. With its emotional harmonies, soulful lyricism, and bold rhythms, Avril’s work will offer new listeners valuable perspective into how she – a wartime composer originating from the early 1900s – envisioned her existence as a artist with mixed heritage.

Past and Present

However about shadows. It can take a while to adjust, to see shapes as they truly exist, to tell reality from distortion, and I had been afraid to address the composer’s background for some time.

I had so wanted the composer to be her father’s daughter. To some extent, that held. The pastoral English palettes of Samuel’s influence can be heard in many of her works, including From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). However, one need only review the titles of her family’s music to realize how he identified as not only a flag bearer of British Romantic style but a advocate of the African diaspora.

This was where parent and child appeared to part ways.

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

Family Background

While he was studying at the prestigious music college, her father – the son of a parent from Sierra Leone and a British mother – started to lean into his heritage. Once the Black American writer the renowned Dunbar visited the UK in the late 19th century, the aspiring artist eagerly sought him out. He set the poet’s African Romances into music and the following year incorporated his poetry for a musical work, Dream Lovers. This was followed by the choral work that made him famous: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Inspired by this American writer’s The Song of Hiawatha, Samuel’s Hiawatha was an worldwide sensation, particularly among African Americans who felt vicarious pride as American society assessed his work by the excellence of his music as opposed to the his race.

Activism and Politics

Success did not temper his activism. In 1900, he was present at the First Pan African Conference in England where he encountered the prominent scholar the renowned Du Bois and saw a series of speeches, including on the subjugation of African people in South Africa. He remained an advocate until the end. He maintained ties with pioneers of civil rights such as Du Bois and this leader, gave addresses on equality for all, and even discussed issues of racism with the US President on a trip to the White House in that year. Regarding his compositions, Du Bois recalled, “he established his reputation so prominently as a musician that it will endure.” He passed away in that year, at 37 years old. Yet how might her father have reacted to his offspring’s move to travel to this country in the mid-20th century?

Conflict and Policy

“Offspring of Renowned Musician expresses approval to S African Bias,” declared a title in the African American magazine Jet magazine. Apartheid “struck me as the correct approach”, Avril told Jet. When asked to explain, she backtracked: she didn’t agree with apartheid “fundamentally” and it “should be allowed to run its course, guided by good-intentioned residents of all races”. Had Avril been more aligned to her father’s politics, or raised in segregated America, she could have hesitated about the policy. But life had protected her.

Heritage and Innocence

“I hold a British passport,” she stated, “and the government agents did not inquire me about my background.” Therefore, with her “fair” skin (according to the magazine), she floated alongside white society, buoyed up by their praise for her late father. She presented about her family’s work at the University of Cape Town and conducted the broadcasting ensemble in that location, programming the bold final section of her concerto, named: “In remembrance of my Father.” Although a skilled pianist herself, she did not perform as the soloist in her concerto. Instead, she consistently conducted as the leader; and so the apartheid orchestra followed her lead.

Avril hoped, as she stated, she “may foster a shift”. Yet in the mid-1950s, circumstances deteriorated. After authorities discovered her African heritage, she could no longer stay the land. Her British passport didn’t protect her, the British high commissioner advised her to leave or face arrest. She returned to England, feeling great shame as the extent of her innocence became clear. “This experience was a painful one,” she lamented. Compounding her humiliation was the release in 1955 of her ill-fated Jet interview, a year after her forced leaving from that nation.

A Recurring Theme

As I sat with these memories, I perceived a familiar story. The story of identifying as British until it’s challenged – one that calls to mind troops of color who fought on behalf of the UK during the global conflict and made it through but were denied their due compensation. And the Windrush generation,