🔗 Share this article

This talented musician constantly felt the weight of her family heritage. Being the child of the renowned Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, among the best-known English composers of the turn of the 20th century, the composer’s reputation was enveloped in the long shadows of history.

The First Recording

In recent months, I reflected on these memories as I prepared to produce the inaugural album of the composer’s 1936 piano concerto. Featuring intense musical themes, heartfelt tunes, and bold rhythms, Avril’s work will provide music lovers deep understanding into how this artist – an artist in conflict born in 1903 – conceived of her world as a female composer of color.

Shadows and Truth

But here’s the thing about legacies. It can take a while to acclimate, to recognize outlines as they actually appear, to tell reality from misrepresentation, and I had been afraid to address her history for some time.

I deeply hoped Avril to be a reflection of her father. To some extent, this was true. The rustic British sounds of her father’s impact can be observed in numerous compositions, such as From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). However, one need only review the names of her father’s compositions to see how he viewed himself as not just a flag bearer of British Romantic style and also a representative of the African diaspora.

At this point father and daughter appeared to part ways.

White America evaluated Samuel by the excellence of his art instead of the his ethnicity.

Parental Heritage

During his studies at the Royal College of Music, her father – the offspring of a African father and a white English mother – turned toward his African roots. Once the African American poet this literary figure arrived in England in 1897, the aspiring artist actively pursued him. He set the poet’s African Romances to music and the following year adapted his verses for an opera, Dream Lovers. Then came the choral work that established his reputation: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Based on this American writer’s The Song of Hiawatha, the piece was an international hit, notably for the Black community who felt shared pride as American society judged Samuel by the quality of his compositions as opposed to the colour of his skin.

Activism and Politics

Recognition did not temper his beliefs. At the turn of the century, he was present at the First Pan African Conference in London where he made the acquaintance of the African American intellectual this influential figure and saw a series of speeches, covering the oppression of Black South Africans. He was a campaigner to his final days. He maintained ties with pioneers of civil rights like this intellectual and this leader, spoke publicly on ending discrimination, and even discussed matters of race with President Theodore Roosevelt while visiting to the US capital in 1904. Regarding his compositions, Du Bois recalled, “he established his reputation so notably as a creative artist that it will endure.” He died in 1912, aged 37. However, how would Samuel have reacted to his daughter’s decision to travel to South Africa in the mid-20th century?

Issues and Stance

“Child of Celebrated Artist gives OK to apartheid system,” appeared as a heading in the Black American publication Jet magazine. The system “appeared to me the correct approach”, the composer stated Jet. When asked to explain, she backtracked: she did not support with apartheid “in principle” and it “ought to be permitted to work itself out, guided by well-meaning people of diverse ethnicities”. Were the composer more attuned to her parent’s beliefs, or born in Jim Crow America, she might have thought twice about apartheid. But life had shielded her.

Heritage and Innocence

“I have a English document,” she stated, “and the officials did not inquire me about my background.” Therefore, with her “porcelain-white” appearance (according to the magazine), she floated alongside white society, buoyed up by their admiration for her deceased parent. She presented about her father’s music at the Cape Town university and led the broadcasting ensemble in the city, featuring the heroic third movement of her Piano Concerto, titled: “In memory of my Father.” Even though a skilled pianist on her own, she did not perform as the featured artist in her concerto. On the contrary, she consistently conducted as the leader; and so the segregated ensemble played under her baton.

Avril hoped, in her own words, she “could introduce a change”. Yet in the mid-1950s, the situation collapsed. When government agents learned of her mixed background, she could no longer stay the land. Her citizenship didn’t protect her, the diplomatic official urged her to go or risk imprisonment. She went back to the UK, feeling great shame as the extent of her innocence became clear. “The realization was a difficult one,” she lamented. Increasing her humiliation was the 1955 publication of her controversial discussion, a year after her sudden departure from South Africa.

A Familiar Story

Upon contemplating with these legacies, I perceived a known narrative. The narrative of identifying as British until it’s challenged – that brings to mind African-descended soldiers who fought on behalf of the English in the World War II and made it through but were not given their earned rewards. And the Windrush generation,