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The composer Avril Coleridge-Taylor always felt the pressure of her father’s reputation. Being the child of the renowned Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, a leading the most famous English artists of the early 20th century, her identity was shrouded in the lingering obscurity of history.

The First Recording

Earlier this year, I sat with these memories as I made arrangements to record the first-ever recording of Avril’s concerto for piano composed in 1936. Boasting intense musical themes, heartfelt tunes, and valiant rhythms, Avril’s work will provide audiences deep understanding into how the composer – a composer during war who entered the world in 1903 – envisioned her world as a female composer of color.

Shadows and Truth

Yet about legacies. One needs patience to acclimate, to see shapes as they truly exist, to distinguish truth from distortion, and I felt hesitant to confront Avril’s past for a period.

I deeply hoped the composer to be following in her father’s footsteps. To some extent, this was true. The pastoral English palettes of parental inspiration can be observed in numerous compositions, for example From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). However, one need only examine the titles of her family’s music to realize how he heard himself as both a standard-bearer of British Romantic style and also a voice of the African diaspora.

This was where parent and child began to differ.

American society assessed the composer by the excellence of his art instead of the his ethnicity.

Parental Heritage

As a student at the prestigious music college, the composer – the offspring of a Sierra Leonean father and a British mother – started to lean into his African roots. At the time the poet of color Paul Laurence Dunbar visited the UK in that era, the 21-year-old composer was keen to meet him. He composed Dunbar’s African Romances into music and the subsequent year adapted his verses for a stage piece, Dream Lovers. Then came the choral composition that made him famous: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Drawing from the poet Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha, the piece was an global success, particularly among African Americans who felt indirect honor as white America judged Samuel by the quality of his music instead of the colour of his skin.

Principles and Actions

Fame did not reduce his activism. During that period, he was present at the initial Pan African gathering in the UK where he made the acquaintance of the Black American thinker the renowned Du Bois and witnessed a series of speeches, covering the oppression of African people in South Africa. He remained an advocate until the end. He maintained ties with trailblazers for equality including the scholar and this leader, spoke publicly on ending discrimination, and even engaged in dialogue on matters of race with the American leader during an invitation to the presidential residence in 1904. As for his music, Du Bois recalled, “he made his mark so notably as a creative artist that it will endure.” He died in 1912, aged 37. However, how would Samuel have thought of his daughter’s decision to work in South Africa in the that decade?

Controversy and Apartheid

“Daughter of Famous Composer expresses approval to South African policy,” appeared as a heading in the African American magazine Jet magazine. The system “seems to me the right policy”, she informed Jet. When asked to explain, she revised her statement: she was not in favor with apartheid “in principle” and it “ought to be permitted to run its course, guided by well-meaning South Africans of diverse ethnicities”. Had Avril been more attuned to her parent’s beliefs, or raised in the US under segregation, she could have hesitated about this system. Yet her life had sheltered her.

Identity and Naivety

“I have a English document,” she said, “and the officials did not inquire me about my ethnicity.” Therefore, with her “porcelain-white” skin (as described), she moved alongside white society, buoyed up by their praise for her late father. She delivered a lecture about her parent’s compositions at the Cape Town university and directed the national orchestra in the city, including the bold final section of her concerto, titled: “In remembrance of my Father.” Even though a skilled pianist on her own, 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 followed her lead.

She desired, according to her, she “may foster a transformation”. But by 1954, things fell apart. When government agents learned of her Black ancestry, she could no longer stay the country. Her British passport offered no defense, the UK representative urged her to go or be jailed. She came home, embarrassed as the scale of her innocence was realized. “The realization was a difficult one,” she expressed. Increasing her disgrace was the printing that year of her controversial discussion, a year after her sudden departure from South Africa.

A Familiar Story

Upon contemplating with these legacies, I felt a familiar story. The narrative of holding UK citizenship until you’re not – that brings to mind Black soldiers who defended the English during the World War II and survived only to be refused rightful benefits. Including those from Windrush,