🔗 Share this article

This talented musician constantly bore the weight of her father’s heritage. As the daughter of the renowned Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, among the prominent English artists of the early 20th century, her reputation was enveloped in the deep shadows of the past.

A World Premiere

Earlier this year, I sat with these legacies as I got ready to make the first-ever recording of the composer’s 1936 piano concerto. Featuring intense musical themes, soulful lyricism, and confident beats, her composition will provide music lovers deep understanding into how the composer – an artist in conflict who entered the world in 1903 – imagined her reality as a female composer of color.

Past and Present

Yet about legacies. It can take a while to acclimate, to see shapes as they actually appear, to separate fact from misrepresentation, and I felt hesitant to face Avril’s past for a period.

I earnestly desired her 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 many of her works, for example From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). But you only have to look at the titles of her family’s music to understand how he identified as not only a standard-bearer of British Romantic style but a voice of the African heritage.

At this point Samuel and Avril began to differ.

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

Samuel’s African Roots

During his studies at the prestigious music college, her father – the child of a African father and a British mother – turned toward his heritage. When the African American poet the renowned Dunbar came to London in that era, the aspiring artist was keen to meet him. He set Dunbar’s African Romances to music and the subsequent year used the poet’s words for a musical work, Dream Lovers. This was followed by the choral work that put Samuel on the map: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Inspired by this American writer’s The Song of Hiawatha, Samuel’s Hiawatha was an global success, especially with the Black community who felt vicarious pride as white America evaluated the composer by the brilliance of his compositions as opposed to the his background.

Advocacy and Beliefs

Recognition did not temper Samuel’s politics. In 1900, he participated in the pioneering African conference in the UK where he encountered the Black American thinker WEB Du Bois and witnessed a range of talks, including on the mistreatment of Black South Africans. He was a campaigner throughout his life. He maintained ties with trailblazers for equality including the scholar and this leader, gave addresses on ending discrimination, and even talked about issues of racism with President Theodore Roosevelt on a trip to the White House in 1904. As for his music, Du Bois recalled, “he established his reputation so notably as a creative artist that it cannot soon be forgotten.” He passed away in the early 20th century, at 37 years old. However, how would her father have reacted to his offspring’s move to travel to South Africa in the mid-20th century?

Conflict and Policy

“Child of Celebrated Artist shows support to apartheid system,” appeared as a heading in the community journal Jet magazine. Apartheid “seems to me the right policy”, Avril told Jet. When asked to explain, she qualified her remarks: she was not in favor with this policy “fundamentally” and it “should be allowed to resolve itself, overseen by benevolent people of all races”. If Avril had been more aligned to her parent’s beliefs, or born in the US under segregation, she may have reconsidered about the policy. Yet her life had protected her.

Identity and Naivety

“I have a British passport,” she remarked, “and the authorities never asked me about my background.” Thus, with her “fair” appearance (as Jet put it), she traveled alongside white society, buoyed up by their acclaim for her deceased parent. She presented about her father’s music at the educational institution and directed the broadcasting ensemble in the city, including the bold final section of her concerto, subtitled: “In memory of my Father.” While a confident pianist herself, she avoided playing as the featured artist in her work. Rather, she always led as the conductor; and so the orchestra of the era followed her lead.

Avril hoped, according to her, she “could introduce a shift”. However, by that year, the situation collapsed. After authorities became aware of her Black ancestry, she could no longer stay the country. Her citizenship didn’t protect her, the UK representative advised her to leave or face arrest. She returned to England, deeply ashamed as the scale of her innocence became clear. “This experience was a difficult one,” she expressed. Compounding her disgrace was the printing that year of her ill-fated Jet interview, a year after her sudden departure from South Africa.

A Recurring Theme

While I reflected with these shadows, I perceived a recurring theme. The account of identifying as British until it’s revoked – one that calls to mind African-descended soldiers who served for the English in the global conflict and survived only to be refused rightful benefits. Along with the Windrush era,