🔗 Share this article

This talented musician constantly experienced the pressure of her parent’s legacy. As the offspring of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, one of the most famous UK musicians of the early 20th century, her identity was shrouded in the long shadows of bygone eras.

An Inaugural Recording

Earlier this year, I contemplated these legacies as I prepared to produce the world premiere recording of Avril’s piano concerto from 1936. Boasting emotional harmonies, soulful lyricism, and bold rhythms, this piece will offer music lovers deep understanding into how she – a composer during war originating from the early 1900s – envisioned her world as a female composer of color.

Shadows and Truth

However about the past. It can take a while to adjust, to recognize outlines as they really are, to distinguish truth from misinterpretation, and I felt hesitant to face her history for a while.

I earnestly desired her to be following in her father’s footsteps. To some extent, that held. The rustic British sounds of parental inspiration 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 realize how he identified as both a flag bearer of UK romantic tradition but a representative of the African heritage.

It was here that father and daughter began to differ.

The United States evaluated Samuel by the excellence of his art as opposed to the his ethnicity.

Family Background

While he was studying at the Royal College of Music, the composer – the child of a parent from Sierra Leone and a Caucasian parent – turned toward his heritage. Once the poet of color the renowned Dunbar visited the UK in 1897, the 21-year-old composer was keen to meet him. He composed Dunbar’s African Romances to music and the subsequent year used the poet’s words for an opera, Dream Lovers. This was followed by the choral work that established his reputation: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Inspired by the poet Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha, this composition was an worldwide sensation, especially with Black Americans who felt indirect honor as white America judged Samuel by the brilliance of his music instead of the his race.

Advocacy and Beliefs

Recognition did not temper his beliefs. During that period, he participated in the First Pan African Conference in England where he made the acquaintance of the African American intellectual WEB Du Bois and saw a range of talks, covering the mistreatment of the Black community there. He was a campaigner until the end. He maintained ties with pioneers of civil rights such as the scholar and Booker T Washington, spoke publicly on ending discrimination, and even talked about racial problems with the American leader on a trip to the White House in 1904. Regarding his compositions, Du Bois recalled, “he wrote his name so notably as a creative artist that it cannot soon be forgotten.” He died in the early 20th century, at 37 years old. Yet how might the composer have made of his daughter’s decision to work in this country in the 1950s?

Controversy and Apartheid

“Child of Celebrated Artist gives OK to South African policy,” ran a headline in the African American magazine Jet magazine. Apartheid “appeared to me the correct approach”, Avril told Jet. Upon further questioning, she revised her statement: she was not in favor with this policy “fundamentally” and it “could be left to run its course, directed by good-intentioned South Africans of diverse ethnicities”. If Avril had been more aligned to her father’s politics, or from the US under segregation, she may have reconsidered about apartheid. But life had sheltered her.

Heritage and Innocence

“I have a UK passport,” she stated, “and the authorities failed to question me about my ethnicity.” Therefore, with her “light” skin (according to the magazine), she traveled alongside white society, supported by their admiration for her deceased parent. She presented about her parent’s compositions at the University of Cape Town and led the national orchestra in that location, including the heroic third movement of her concerto, subtitled: “Dedicated to my Father.” While a accomplished player herself, she never played as the lead performer in her work. On the contrary, she always led as the maestro; and so the apartheid orchestra played under her baton.

The composer aspired, according to her, she “may foster a transformation”. But by 1954, the situation collapsed. When government agents became aware of her African heritage, she had to depart the land. Her UK document failed to safeguard her, the diplomatic official advised her to leave or face arrest. She went back to the UK, deeply ashamed as the scale of her inexperience became clear. “The realization was a difficult one,” she stated. Adding to her disgrace was the printing that year of her controversial discussion, a year after her unceremonious exit from the country.

A Common Narrative

As I sat with these memories, I sensed a recurring theme. The account of holding UK citizenship until it’s revoked – which recalls Black soldiers who defended the British in the second world war and made it through but were refused rightful benefits. And the Windrush generation,