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This talented musician constantly felt the weight of her father’s reputation. As the offspring of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, among the most famous UK musicians of the 1900s, her name was shrouded in the long shadows of bygone eras.

A World Premiere

In recent months, I sat with these memories as I got ready to make the inaugural album of the composer’s piano concerto from 1936. Featuring emotional harmonies, heartfelt tunes, and valiant rhythms, her composition will grant music lovers fascinating insight into how she – an artist in conflict originating from the early 1900s – imagined her existence as a artist with mixed heritage.

Shadows and Truth

Yet about legacies. It requires time to adjust, to see shapes as they truly exist, to tell reality from distortion, and I felt hesitant to address Avril’s past for some time.

I earnestly desired the composer to be a reflection of her father. Partially, this was true. The idyllic English tones of parental inspiration can be observed in many of her works, for example From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). Yet it suffices to review the names of her parent’s works to realize how he identified as not just a champion of UK romantic tradition and also a representative of the African heritage.

This was where father and daughter appeared to part ways.

American society evaluated Samuel by the brilliance of his art rather than the his racial background.

Family Background

During his studies at the renowned institution, Samuel – the child of a parent from Sierra Leone and a Caucasian parent – started to lean into his background. Once the African American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar arrived in England in the late 19th century, the young musician was keen to meet him. He composed this literary work to music and the next year adapted his verses for a stage piece, Dream Lovers. Subsequently arrived the choral piece that established his reputation: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Inspired by this American writer’s The Song of Hiawatha, Samuel’s Hiawatha was an international hit, particularly among Black Americans who felt shared pride as American society assessed his work by the excellence of his compositions instead of the his race.

Principles and Actions

Fame did not temper his beliefs. In 1900, he attended the pioneering African conference in England where he encountered the African American intellectual the renowned Du Bois and witnessed a variety of discussions, such as the mistreatment of African people in South Africa. He was a campaigner throughout his life. He sustained relationships with pioneers of civil rights like this intellectual and the educator Washington, delivered his own speeches on racial equality, and even discussed issues of racism with the American leader on a trip to the US capital in the early 1900s. In terms of his art, Du Bois recalled, “he wrote his name so prominently as a composer that it will endure.” He died in that year, in his thirties. Yet how might her father have reacted to his child’s choice to work in the African nation in the mid-20th century?

Conflict and Policy

“Child of Celebrated Artist shows support to S African Bias,” declared a title in the African American magazine Jet magazine. Apartheid “seems to me the correct approach”, Avril told Jet. When asked to explain, she backtracked: she was not in favor with apartheid “in principle” and it “ought to be permitted to work itself out, guided by good-intentioned South Africans of every background”. If Avril had been more aligned to her family’s principles, or raised in Jim Crow America, she might have thought twice about this system. Yet her life had shielded her.

Background and Inexperience

“I have a UK passport,” she stated, “and the officials failed to question me about my ethnicity.” So, with her “fair” appearance (as described), she floated among the Europeans, lifted by their admiration for her late father. She presented about her parent’s compositions at the educational institution and conducted the national orchestra in Johannesburg, programming the inspiring part of her Piano Concerto, named: “In remembrance of my Father.” Although a confident pianist herself, she never played as the featured artist in her work. On the contrary, she always led as the conductor; and so the orchestra of the era performed under her direction.

Avril hoped, in her own words, she “might bring a shift”. However, by that year, circumstances deteriorated. Once officials became aware of her African heritage, she was forced to leave the land. Her citizenship failed to safeguard her, the diplomatic official recommended her departure or be jailed. She came home, embarrassed as the magnitude of her naivety became clear. “The lesson was a painful one,” she expressed. Increasing her embarrassment was the printing that year of her unfortunate magazine feature, a year after her forced leaving from that nation.

A Common Narrative

While I reflected with these shadows, I sensed a familiar story. The narrative of holding UK citizenship until it’s revoked – which recalls Black soldiers who fought on behalf of the UK during the World War II and made it through but were refused rightful benefits. Along with the Windrush era,