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This talented musician constantly felt the weight of her family heritage. Being the child of the celebrated composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, among the best-known British musicians of the turn of the 20th century, Avril’s reputation was cloaked in the deep shadows of bygone eras.

The First Recording

In recent months, I contemplated these shadows as I made arrangements to produce the inaugural album of the composer’s concerto for piano composed in 1936. Boasting impassioned harmonies, soulful lyricism, and confident beats, Avril’s work will grant new listeners fascinating insight into how the composer – a composer during war originating from the early 1900s – conceived of her reality as a woman of colour.

Legacy and Reality

But here’s the thing about legacies. One needs patience to acclimate, to recognize outlines as they truly exist, to separate fact from misinterpretation, and I was reluctant to address her history for some time.

I deeply hoped her to be following in her father’s footsteps. To some extent, this was true. The rustic British sounds of Samuel’s influence can be observed in many of her works, including From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). But you only have to review the titles of her father’s compositions to realize how he viewed himself as not only a standard-bearer of British Romantic style and also a representative of the African heritage.

It was here that parent and child seemed to diverge.

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

Samuel’s African Roots

As a student at the renowned institution, the composer – the son of a African father and a white English mother – started to lean into his heritage. Once the poet of color Paul Laurence Dunbar visited the UK in that era, the young musician actively pursued him. He set this literary work as a composition and the next year used the poet’s words for an opera, Dream Lovers. This was followed by the choral composition that made him famous: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Drawing from the poet Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha, the piece was an international hit, especially with Black Americans who felt shared pride as white America assessed his work by the excellence of his compositions instead of the his background.

Advocacy and Beliefs

Recognition failed to diminish Samuel’s politics. At the turn of the century, he was present at the First Pan African Conference in London where he made the acquaintance of the prominent scholar the renowned Du Bois and saw a variety of discussions, covering the mistreatment of African people in South Africa. He was an activist throughout his life. He kept connections with trailblazers for equality such as Du Bois and the educator Washington, gave addresses on equality for all, and even engaged in dialogue on issues of racism with President Theodore Roosevelt on a trip to the presidential residence in that year. Regarding his compositions, the scholar reflected, “he wrote his name so notably as a composer that it will endure.” He succumbed in 1912, aged 37. Yet how might the composer have reacted to his offspring’s move to be in this country in the 1950s?

Issues and Stance

“Child of Celebrated Artist shows support to S African Bias,” ran a headline in the community journal Jet magazine. The system “appeared to me the appropriate course”, she informed Jet. When pushed to clarify, she qualified her remarks: she did not support with this policy “as a concept” and it “ought to be permitted to run its course, directed by well-meaning residents of every background”. Had Avril been more in tune to her father’s politics, or from Jim Crow America, she may have reconsidered about the policy. However, existence had protected her.

Identity and Naivety

“I possess a UK passport,” she remarked, “and the officials failed to question me about my race.” Therefore, with her “porcelain-white” skin (according to the magazine), she moved alongside white society, lifted by their acclaim for her late father. She gave a talk about her family’s work at the University of Cape Town and directed the national orchestra in the city, featuring the heroic third movement of her composition, named: “Dedicated to my Father.” While a accomplished player personally, she avoided playing as the lead performer in her piece. Rather, she consistently conducted as the leader; and so the apartheid orchestra followed her lead.

The composer aspired, according to her, she “might bring a transformation”. Yet in the mid-1950s, things fell apart. After authorities discovered her mixed background, she could no longer stay the nation. Her British passport offered no defense, the diplomatic official recommended her departure or be jailed. She went back to the UK, deeply ashamed as the scale of her innocence was realized. “This experience was a painful one,” she stated. Adding to her disgrace was the 1955 publication of her ill-fated Jet interview, a year after her sudden departure from South Africa.

A Common Narrative

Upon contemplating with these legacies, I sensed a known narrative. The narrative of holding UK citizenship until you’re not – one that calls to mind troops of color who fought on behalf of the UK during the second world war and made it through but were refused rightful benefits. And the Windrush generation,