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Avril Coleridge-Taylor always bore the burden of her family heritage. As the offspring of the celebrated composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, among the most famous English artists of the early 20th century, Avril’s identity was enveloped in the deep shadows of the past.

The First Recording

Not long ago, I sat with these legacies as I got ready to record the inaugural album of her concerto for piano composed in 1936. With its impassioned harmonies, expressive melodies, and valiant rhythms, her composition will grant new listeners deep understanding into how she – a wartime composer who entered the world in 1903 – conceived of her existence as a female composer of color.

Legacy and Reality

Yet about shadows. One needs patience to acclimate, to recognize outlines as they actually appear, to tell reality from misrepresentation, and I was reluctant to address the composer’s background for a period.

I earnestly desired Avril to be following in her father’s footsteps. In some ways, she was. The pastoral English palettes of Samuel’s influence 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 parent’s works to realize how he identified as not just a standard-bearer of UK romantic tradition but a voice of the African diaspora.

At this point Samuel and Avril began to differ.

White America judged Samuel by the brilliance of his music instead of the his racial background.

Family Background

While he was studying at the Royal College of Music, her father – the offspring of a parent from Sierra Leone and a British mother – began embracing his background. At the time the Black American writer Paul Laurence Dunbar arrived in England in that era, the aspiring artist eagerly sought him out. He adapted this literary work as a composition and the subsequent year incorporated his poetry for a musical work, Dream Lovers. Then came the choral piece that established his reputation: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Inspired by the poet Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha, the piece was an global success, particularly among Black Americans who felt indirect honor as American society evaluated the composer by the excellence of his art as opposed to the his background.

Principles and Actions

Success did not temper his beliefs. At the turn of the century, he was present at the pioneering African conference in the UK where he encountered the Black American thinker this influential figure and observed a variety of discussions, covering the subjugation of Black South Africans. He remained an advocate throughout his life. He maintained ties with early civil rights leaders including this intellectual and the educator Washington, spoke publicly on racial equality, and even engaged in dialogue on matters of race with the US President while visiting to the US capital in the early 1900s. Regarding his compositions, reminisced Du Bois, “he made his mark so prominently as a composer that it will endure.” He passed away in 1912, at 37 years old. Yet how might her father have thought of his offspring’s move to work in South Africa in the mid-20th century?

Issues and Stance

“Daughter of Famous Composer gives OK to South African policy,” declared a title in the Black American publication Jet magazine. The system “appeared to me the appropriate course”, the composer stated Jet. When pushed to clarify, she qualified her remarks: she didn’t agree with this policy “as a concept” and it “could be left to run its course, guided by well-meaning people of every background”. Were the composer more in tune to her family’s principles, or born in segregated America, she could have hesitated about apartheid. However, existence had sheltered her.

Background and Inexperience

“I hold a English document,” she stated, “and the government agents did not inquire me about my background.” Therefore, with her “light” complexion (as Jet put it), she floated within European circles, lifted by their praise for her late father. She delivered a lecture about her father’s music at the Cape Town university and led the South African Broadcasting Corporation Orchestra in Johannesburg, including the heroic third movement of her Piano Concerto, titled: “In memory of my Father.” Although a skilled pianist herself, she did not perform as the lead performer in her concerto. Rather, she always led as the conductor; and so the orchestra of the era performed under her direction.

She desired, in her own words, she “could introduce a transformation”. Yet in the mid-1950s, the situation collapsed. After authorities discovered her African heritage, she could no longer stay the land. Her British passport failed to safeguard her, the UK representative urged her to go or face arrest. She came home, feeling great shame as the magnitude of her naivety became clear. “The realization was a difficult one,” she expressed. Increasing her humiliation was the printing that year of her ill-fated Jet interview, a year after her forced leaving from South Africa.

A Recurring Theme

While I reflected with these legacies, I felt a recurring theme. The narrative of identifying as British until it’s challenged – that brings to mind troops of color who defended the British during the global conflict and made it through but were not given their earned rewards. Including those from Windrush,