🔗 Share this article

This talented musician continually bore the weight of her father’s heritage. Being the child of the celebrated composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, among the best-known UK artists of the 1900s, Avril’s reputation was cloaked in the deep shadows of the past.

A World Premiere

Earlier this year, I reflected on these memories as I prepared to produce the world premiere recording of the composer’s concerto for piano composed in 1936. Featuring emotional harmonies, expressive melodies, and confident beats, her composition will offer new listeners deep understanding into how the composer – a composer during war who entered the world in 1903 – conceived of her world as a artist with mixed heritage.

Past and Present

However about shadows. It can take a while to adapt, to recognize outlines as they actually appear, to tell reality from misinterpretation, and I was reluctant to confront Avril’s past for a period.

I deeply hoped her to be following in her father’s footsteps. In some ways, that held. The pastoral English palettes of her father’s impact can be heard in several pieces, including From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). But you only have to look at the titles of her parent’s works to understand how he heard himself as not only a champion of UK romantic tradition as well as a representative of the African diaspora.

This was where parent and child seemed to diverge.

White America judged Samuel by the excellence of his compositions rather than the colour of his skin.

Family Background

As a student at the renowned institution, the composer – the child of a African father and a white English mother – started to lean into his heritage. Once the Black American writer the renowned Dunbar came to London in the late 19th century, the aspiring artist actively pursued him. He adapted the poet’s African Romances as a composition and the following year incorporated his poetry for a musical work, Dream Lovers. Then came the choral work 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, notably for African Americans who felt vicarious pride as American society judged Samuel by the excellence of his music as opposed to the colour of his skin.

Activism and Politics

Fame did not reduce his beliefs. In 1900, he was present at the First Pan African Conference in England where he encountered the African American intellectual this influential figure and witnessed a range of talks, such as the oppression of the Black community there. He was an activist throughout his life. He maintained ties with trailblazers for equality including Du Bois and the educator Washington, delivered his own speeches on racial equality, and even talked about issues of racism with the US President during an invitation to the US capital in that year. In terms of his art, the scholar reflected, “he established his reputation so notably as a composer that it cannot soon be forgotten.” He succumbed in that year, at 37 years old. Yet how might her father have reacted to his offspring’s move to work in this country in the 1950s?

Controversy and Apartheid

“Child of Celebrated Artist gives OK to South African policy,” appeared as a heading in the African American magazine Jet magazine. Apartheid “appeared to me the right policy”, she informed Jet. When asked to explain, she revised her statement: she did not support with this policy “as a concept” and it “ought to be permitted to run its course, overseen by benevolent residents of diverse ethnicities”. Had Avril been more aligned to her family’s principles, or born in Jim Crow America, she could have hesitated about the policy. However, existence had sheltered her.

Identity and Naivety

“I have a UK passport,” she stated, “and the government agents never asked me about my background.” Therefore, with her “fair” appearance (according to the magazine), she moved alongside white society, supported by their acclaim for her renowned family member. She gave a talk about her parent’s compositions at the educational institution and led the South African Broadcasting Corporation Orchestra in the city, featuring the bold final section of her concerto, titled: “Dedicated to my Father.” While a confident pianist herself, she never played as the soloist in her work. Rather, she invariably directed as the leader; and so the apartheid orchestra followed her lead.

The composer aspired, according to her, she “might bring a shift”. Yet in the mid-1950s, the situation collapsed. When government agents learned of her Black ancestry, she had to depart the land. Her citizenship didn’t protect her, the British high commissioner recommended her departure or risk imprisonment. She went back to the UK, feeling great shame as the scale of her inexperience became clear. “The realization was a hard one,” she stated. Adding to her disgrace was the release in 1955 of her controversial discussion, a year after her unceremonious exit from South Africa.

A Familiar Story

Upon contemplating with these legacies, I perceived a known narrative. The narrative of holding UK citizenship until it’s challenged – one that calls to mind Black soldiers who defended the UK during the global conflict and survived only to be refused rightful benefits. Along with the Windrush era,