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This talented musician continually felt the weight of her family reputation. Being the child of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, a leading the best-known British composers of the turn of the 20th century, her name was shrouded in the deep shadows of history.

A World Premiere

Not long ago, I sat with these shadows as I got ready to record the first-ever recording of her concerto for piano composed in 1936. Boasting impassioned harmonies, expressive melodies, and bold rhythms, Avril’s work will provide music lovers fascinating insight into how the composer – a wartime composer originating from the early 1900s – imagined her world as a woman of colour.

Past and Present

Yet about the past. It requires time to adjust, to see shapes as they truly exist, to separate fact from misinterpretation, and I was reluctant to address her history for a while.

I had so wanted Avril to be her father’s daughter. To some extent, she was. The rustic British sounds of her father’s impact can be observed in numerous compositions, such as From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). However, one need only examine the titles of her parent’s works to see how he viewed himself as not just a flag bearer of UK romantic tradition and also a voice of the Black diaspora.

It was here that parent and child seemed to diverge.

The United States assessed the composer by the excellence of his art instead of the his racial background.

Family Background

As a student at the prestigious music college, the composer – the child of a African father and a British mother – turned toward his background. When the poet of color the renowned Dunbar arrived in England in that era, the aspiring artist was keen to meet him. He composed the poet’s African Romances as a composition and the next year used the poet’s words for a musical work, Dream Lovers. Then came the choral composition that established his reputation: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Based on Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha, this composition was an international hit, particularly among African Americans who felt vicarious pride as the majority judged Samuel by the excellence of his music instead of the his race.

Advocacy and Beliefs

Success did not temper Samuel’s politics. At the turn of the century, he participated in the First Pan African Conference in England where he encountered the African American intellectual the renowned Du Bois and witnessed a range of talks, including on the mistreatment of Black South Africans. He was a campaigner to his final days. He sustained relationships with pioneers of civil rights like the scholar and this leader, spoke publicly on ending discrimination, and even engaged in dialogue on issues of racism with President Theodore Roosevelt while visiting to the US capital in that year. As for his music, the scholar reflected, “he established his reputation so prominently as a composer that it will endure.” He passed away in the early 20th century, aged 37. However, how would Samuel have made of his child’s choice to be in the African nation in the mid-20th century?

Controversy and Apartheid

“Offspring of Renowned Musician expresses approval to apartheid system,” appeared as a heading in the community journal Jet magazine. This policy “struck me as the appropriate course”, Avril told Jet. When asked to explain, she qualified her remarks: she did not support with apartheid “as a concept” and it “could be left to run its course, overseen by benevolent residents of all races”. Were the composer more in tune to her parent’s beliefs, or raised in segregated America, she might have thought twice about the policy. But life had protected her.

Heritage and Innocence

“I possess a English document,” she remarked, “and the officials failed to question me about my background.” Therefore, with her “porcelain-white” appearance (according to the magazine), she floated among the Europeans, buoyed up by their admiration for her deceased parent. She gave a talk about her parent’s compositions at the educational institution and led the broadcasting ensemble in that location, including the heroic third movement of her Piano Concerto, subtitled: “In remembrance of my Father.” Although a confident pianist herself, she did not perform as the lead performer in her piece. Instead, she consistently conducted as the conductor; and so the segregated ensemble followed her lead.

The composer aspired, as she stated, she “could introduce a change”. However, by that year, things fell apart. When government agents discovered her mixed background, she was forced to leave the country. Her British passport failed to safeguard her, the British high commissioner recommended her departure or risk imprisonment. She came home, deeply ashamed as the scale of her inexperience dawned. “The realization was a painful one,” she lamented. Compounding her humiliation was the printing that year of her controversial discussion, a year after her sudden departure from the country.

A Recurring Theme

While I reflected with these legacies, I sensed a recurring theme. The narrative of identifying as British until you’re not – that brings to mind African-descended soldiers who defended the UK in the World War II and made it through but were denied their due compensation. And the Windrush generation,