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This talented musician continually felt the pressure of her family legacy. Being the child of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, among the most famous English artists of the early 20th century, her reputation was shrouded in the long shadows of bygone eras.

An Inaugural Recording

In recent months, I reflected on these legacies as I got ready to record the first-ever recording of her piano concerto from 1936. Featuring impassioned harmonies, expressive melodies, and bold rhythms, this piece will provide new listeners fascinating insight into how she – a wartime composer born in 1903 – conceived of her world as a artist with mixed heritage.

Past and Present

Yet about the past. It can take a while to adapt, to perceive forms as they really are, to tell reality from distortion, and I had been afraid to confront the composer’s background for some time.

I deeply hoped the composer to be a reflection of her father. Partially, that held. The rustic British sounds of Samuel’s influence can be detected in several pieces, for example From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). But you only have to examine the titles of her family’s music to understand how he heard himself as not only a flag bearer of British Romantic style as well as a representative of the Black diaspora.

This was where father and daughter seemed to diverge.

American society assessed the composer by the mastery of his compositions rather than the his ethnicity.

Family Background

As a student at the Royal College of Music, Samuel – the son of a parent from Sierra Leone and a British mother – began embracing his heritage. At the time the African American poet this literary figure visited the UK in the late 19th century, the 21-year-old composer eagerly sought him out. He adapted this literary work into music and the following year adapted his verses for an opera, Dream Lovers. Then came the choral work that made him famous: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Inspired by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha, the piece was an worldwide sensation, especially with Black Americans who felt vicarious pride as the majority evaluated the composer by the quality of his art as opposed to the his background.

Principles and Actions

Success did not reduce Samuel’s politics. At the turn of the century, he attended the First Pan African Conference in London where he met the Black American thinker WEB Du Bois and observed a range of talks, covering the subjugation of the Black community there. He was an activist throughout his life. He kept connections with pioneers of civil rights like the scholar and Booker T Washington, gave addresses on ending discrimination, and even discussed matters of race with the American leader while visiting to the US capital in that year. In terms of his art, reminisced Du Bois, “he established his reputation so notably as a musician that it cannot soon be forgotten.” He succumbed in the early 20th century, at 37 years old. However, how would Samuel have reacted to his offspring’s move to travel to South Africa in the 1950s?

Conflict and Policy

“Child of Celebrated Artist expresses approval to S African Bias,” declared a title in the community journal Jet magazine. This policy “struck me as the correct approach”, Avril told Jet. Upon further questioning, she qualified her remarks: she did not support with the system “in principle” and it “ought to be permitted to resolve itself, guided by benevolent people of diverse ethnicities”. Had Avril been more aligned to her father’s politics, or raised in segregated America, she may have reconsidered about apartheid. Yet her life had sheltered her.

Heritage and Innocence

“I possess a English document,” she said, “and the government agents did not inquire me about my background.” So, with her “light” skin (as Jet put it), she floated alongside white society, buoyed up by their praise for her deceased parent. She gave a talk about her father’s music at the Cape Town university and led the South African Broadcasting Corporation Orchestra in the city, including the bold final section of her composition, titled: “Dedicated to my Father.” Although a confident pianist personally, she did not perform as the soloist in her concerto. On the contrary, she always led as the leader; and so the apartheid orchestra played under her baton.

Avril hoped, according to her, she “might bring a change”. Yet in the mid-1950s, circumstances deteriorated. Once officials discovered her Black ancestry, she could no longer stay the nation. Her British passport didn’t protect her, the UK representative recommended her departure or be jailed. She came home, deeply ashamed as the magnitude of her naivety dawned. “The lesson was a painful one,” she stated. Compounding her humiliation was the printing that year of her unfortunate magazine feature, a year after her sudden departure from South Africa.

A Recurring Theme

Upon contemplating with these legacies, I sensed a recurring theme. The narrative of being British until you’re not – one that calls to mind Black soldiers who defended the British throughout the World War II and made it through but were refused rightful benefits. Along with the Windrush era,