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Avril Coleridge-Taylor constantly felt the burden of her parent’s legacy. Being the child of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, one of the most famous UK musicians of the 1900s, Avril’s reputation was shrouded in the deep shadows of bygone eras.

The First Recording

In recent months, I sat with these shadows as I prepared to make the first-ever recording of her concerto for piano composed in 1936. Boasting intense musical themes, soulful lyricism, and bold rhythms, her composition will provide audiences deep understanding into how this artist – a composer during war who entered the world in 1903 – envisioned her reality as a woman of colour.

Shadows and Truth

Yet about legacies. It requires time to adjust, to see shapes as they actually appear, to tell reality from misrepresentation, and I was reluctant to confront the composer’s background for a while.

I earnestly desired the composer to be following in her father’s footsteps. Partially, she was. The rustic British sounds of her father’s impact can be heard in many of her works, for example From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). However, one need only look at the titles of her father’s compositions to realize how he heard himself as both a standard-bearer of English Romanticism as well as a advocate of the African diaspora.

This was where father and daughter began to differ.

American society evaluated Samuel by the brilliance of his compositions as opposed to the his ethnicity.

Family Background

While he was studying at the renowned institution, her father – the child of a parent from Sierra Leone and a white English mother – began embracing his heritage. At the time the poet of color Paul Laurence Dunbar arrived in England in that era, the young musician actively pursued him. He adapted this literary work to music and the subsequent year incorporated his poetry for a stage piece, Dream Lovers. Subsequently arrived the choral composition that established his reputation: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Inspired by the poet Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha, Samuel’s Hiawatha was an worldwide sensation, particularly among the Black community who felt indirect honor as the majority judged Samuel by the quality of his music rather than the his race.

Activism and Politics

Fame did not temper his activism. At the turn of the century, he participated in the initial Pan African gathering in the UK where he encountered the prominent scholar the renowned Du Bois and observed a series of speeches, such as the mistreatment of Black South Africans. He was an activist throughout his life. He maintained ties with trailblazers for equality such as this intellectual and Booker T Washington, delivered his own speeches on racial equality, and even discussed issues of racism with the American leader during an invitation to the White House in the early 1900s. In terms of his art, the scholar reflected, “he wrote his name so high as a composer that it cannot soon be forgotten.” He succumbed in that year, aged 37. However, how would Samuel have thought of his offspring’s move to be in the African nation in the mid-20th century?

Conflict and Policy

“Daughter of Famous Composer shows support to South African policy,” declared a title in the Black American publication Jet magazine. This policy “seems to me the right policy”, she informed Jet. Upon further questioning, she backtracked: she didn’t agree with apartheid “in principle” and it “ought to be permitted to resolve itself, overseen by well-meaning South Africans of diverse ethnicities”. If Avril had been more attuned to her father’s politics, or raised in Jim Crow America, she may have reconsidered about apartheid. Yet her life had protected her.

Identity and Naivety

“I hold a UK passport,” she said, “and the officials did not inquire me about my race.” Thus, with her “porcelain-white” appearance (according to the magazine), she traveled alongside white society, buoyed up by their acclaim for her renowned family member. She presented about her family’s work at the educational institution and directed the South African Broadcasting Corporation Orchestra in Johannesburg, including the inspiring part of her composition, titled: “In memory of my Father.” Even though a skilled pianist personally, she did not perform as the soloist in her piece. Instead, she always led as the maestro; and so the segregated ensemble played under her baton.

The composer aspired, in her own words, she “may foster a transformation”. Yet in the mid-1950s, things fell apart. When government agents discovered her mixed background, she had to depart the nation. Her citizenship didn’t protect her, the UK representative advised her to leave or face arrest. She went back to the UK, embarrassed as the magnitude of her innocence was realized. “This experience was a painful one,” she expressed. Increasing her embarrassment was the release in 1955 of her unfortunate magazine feature, a year after her sudden departure from the country.

A Common Narrative

Upon contemplating with these shadows, I sensed a recurring theme. The narrative of holding UK citizenship until it’s challenged – one that calls to mind Black soldiers who defended the British during the World War II and lived only to be refused rightful benefits. Along with the Windrush era,