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This talented musician always experienced the burden of her father’s reputation. As the daughter of the celebrated composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, one of the prominent UK musicians of the early 20th century, Avril’s name was cloaked in the deep shadows of bygone eras.

An Inaugural Recording

In recent months, I contemplated these legacies as I made arrangements to make the first-ever recording of her 1936 piano concerto. Boasting impassioned harmonies, soulful lyricism, and bold rhythms, this piece will offer audiences fascinating insight into how this artist – a composer during war born in 1903 – conceived of her reality as a woman of colour.

Shadows and Truth

However about legacies. It requires time to acclimate, to see shapes as they really are, to distinguish truth from misinterpretation, and I was reluctant to address the composer’s background for a while.

I had so wanted Avril to be following in her father’s footsteps. In some ways, this was true. The idyllic English tones of her father’s impact can be detected in numerous compositions, such as From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). Yet it suffices to look at the names of her parent’s works to realize how he identified as not only a champion of UK romantic tradition as well as a representative of the African diaspora.

At this point Samuel and Avril appeared to part ways.

The United States assessed the composer by the mastery of his art as opposed to the colour of his skin.

Samuel’s African Roots

During his studies at the renowned institution, the composer – the son of a Sierra Leonean father and a British mother – began embracing his background. At the time the Black American writer the renowned Dunbar visited the UK in the late 19th century, the young musician actively pursued him. He composed this literary work to music and the subsequent year used the poet’s words for an opera, Dream Lovers. Then came the choral composition that put Samuel on the map: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Inspired by the poet Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha, Samuel’s Hiawatha was an international hit, especially with African Americans who felt vicarious pride as white America evaluated the composer by the excellence of his compositions as opposed to the his race.

Principles and Actions

Recognition did not reduce his activism. At the turn of the century, he was present at the pioneering African conference in the UK where he met the African American intellectual WEB Du Bois and witnessed a variety of discussions, including on the mistreatment of African people in South Africa. He remained an advocate until the end. He maintained ties with pioneers of civil rights like Du Bois and this leader, delivered his own speeches on racial equality, and even engaged in dialogue on racial problems with the US President on a trip to the presidential residence in 1904. In terms of his art, reminisced Du Bois, “he established his reputation so prominently as a creative artist that it will long be remembered.” He died in 1912, aged 37. However, how would Samuel have thought of his child’s choice to be in the African nation in the that decade?

Issues and Stance

“Child of Celebrated Artist shows support to South African policy,” appeared as a heading in the African American magazine Jet magazine. The system “seems to me the right policy”, the composer stated Jet. When asked to explain, she revised her statement: she was not in favor with apartheid “fundamentally” and it “could be left to work itself out, guided by well-meaning South Africans of every background”. Had Avril been more in tune to her father’s politics, or born in segregated America, she could have hesitated about this system. But life had protected her.

Background and Inexperience

“I possess a English document,” she remarked, “and the authorities failed to question me about my ethnicity.” Therefore, with her “light” complexion (according to the magazine), she moved alongside white society, supported by their praise for her deceased parent. She gave a talk about her parent’s compositions at the Cape Town university and directed the national orchestra in the city, featuring the heroic third movement of her Piano Concerto, named: “Dedicated to my Father.” Although a skilled pianist on her own, she did not perform as the lead performer in her work. On the contrary, she always led as the conductor; and so the apartheid orchestra played under her baton.

Avril hoped, according to her, she “may foster a transformation”. However, by that year, circumstances deteriorated. When government agents became aware of her Black ancestry, she had to depart the land. Her UK document didn’t protect her, the British high commissioner urged her to go or face arrest. She went back to the UK, feeling great shame as the magnitude of her innocence dawned. “The lesson was a painful one,” she expressed. Compounding her humiliation was the printing that year of her unfortunate magazine feature, a year after her sudden departure from the country.

A Recurring Theme

While I reflected with these legacies, I felt a recurring theme. The story of being British until it’s revoked – one that calls to mind African-descended soldiers who fought on behalf of the UK in the second world war and made it through but were denied their due compensation. And the Windrush generation,