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Avril Coleridge-Taylor continually felt the burden of her parent’s heritage. As the daughter of the renowned Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, a leading the most famous British composers of the turn of the 20th century, Avril’s name was enveloped in the long shadows of history.

The First Recording

In recent months, I sat with these shadows as I got ready to record the inaugural album of the composer’s concerto for piano composed in 1936. Boasting impassioned harmonies, expressive melodies, and confident beats, Avril’s work will offer new listeners fascinating insight into how she – an artist in conflict born in 1903 – imagined her world as a woman of colour.

Legacy and Reality

However about shadows. It requires time to acclimate, to recognize outlines as they actually appear, to tell reality from misinterpretation, and I felt hesitant to face her history for a period.

I earnestly desired Avril to be a reflection of her father. Partially, this was true. The idyllic English tones of her father’s impact can be detected in several pieces, including From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). But you only have to examine the names of her family’s music to realize how he heard himself as both a standard-bearer of English Romanticism but a voice of the Black diaspora.

It was here that father and daughter began to differ.

The United States judged Samuel by the mastery of his music as opposed to the colour of his skin.

Family Background

As a student at the renowned institution, the composer – the offspring of a parent from Sierra Leone and a white English mother – started to lean into his background. At the time the African American poet this literary figure visited the UK in the late 19th century, the aspiring artist eagerly sought him out. He set the poet’s African Romances as a composition and the subsequent year used the poet’s words for a musical work, Dream Lovers. Subsequently arrived the choral piece that established his reputation: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Based on this American writer’s The Song of Hiawatha, this composition was an worldwide sensation, notably for the Black community who felt vicarious pride as the majority judged Samuel by the brilliance of his art as opposed to the his race.

Principles and Actions

Recognition did not reduce Samuel’s politics. In 1900, he participated in the pioneering African conference in the UK where he made the acquaintance of the African American intellectual WEB Du Bois and saw a variety of discussions, such as the oppression of Black South Africans. He remained an advocate to his final days. He maintained ties with trailblazers for equality such as Du Bois and this leader, spoke publicly on racial equality, and even talked about matters of race with the American leader on a trip to the US capital in that year. As for his music, reminisced Du Bois, “he made his mark so notably as a creative artist that it will endure.” He passed away in the early 20th century, at 37 years old. However, how would the composer have reacted to his child’s choice to travel to the African nation in the that decade?

Controversy and Apartheid

“Child of Celebrated Artist gives OK to S African Bias,” declared a title in the African American magazine Jet magazine. This policy “appeared to me the correct approach”, the composer stated Jet. When pushed to clarify, she revised her statement: she did not support with apartheid “as a concept” and it “ought to be permitted to work itself out, guided by benevolent residents of all races”. Had Avril been more aligned to her father’s politics, or raised in Jim Crow America, she might have thought twice about apartheid. Yet her life had shielded her.

Heritage and Innocence

“I hold a English document,” she stated, “and the government agents never asked me about my ethnicity.” So, with her “porcelain-white” complexion (as Jet put it), she floated alongside white society, supported by their admiration for her renowned family member. She gave a talk about her family’s work at the University of Cape Town and led the national orchestra in the city, featuring the heroic third movement of her Piano Concerto, subtitled: “Dedicated to my Father.” Although a skilled pianist herself, she did not perform as the soloist in her piece. Instead, she always led as the leader; and so the segregated ensemble played under her baton.

The composer aspired, in her own words, she “might bring a shift”. However, by that year, circumstances deteriorated. When government agents discovered her Black ancestry, she had to depart the country. Her UK document failed to safeguard her, the British high commissioner recommended her departure or risk imprisonment. She came home, embarrassed as the scale of her naivety dawned. “This experience was a difficult one,” she stated. Adding to her humiliation was the 1955 publication of her ill-fated Jet interview, a year after her sudden departure from South Africa.

A Familiar Story

While I reflected with these shadows, I sensed a known narrative. The story of being British until it’s revoked – that brings to mind Black soldiers who served for the English throughout the second world war and made it through but were refused rightful benefits. Including those from Windrush,