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Avril Coleridge-Taylor continually experienced the weight of her family heritage. Being the child of the renowned Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, among the prominent English artists of the early 20th century, her reputation was enveloped in the long shadows of the past.

A World Premiere

Earlier this year, I sat with these memories as I got ready to record the world premiere recording of Avril’s 1936 piano concerto. Boasting emotional harmonies, heartfelt tunes, and confident beats, this piece will offer new listeners valuable perspective into how she – a composer during war born in 1903 – conceived of her reality as a woman of colour.

Legacy and Reality

However about the past. It can take a while to acclimate, to see shapes as they actually appear, to distinguish truth from misinterpretation, and I was reluctant to address the composer’s background for a while.

I earnestly desired Avril to be her father’s daughter. In some ways, this was true. 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 review the titles of her family’s music to realize how he viewed himself as not only a flag bearer of British Romantic style but a voice of the African heritage.

This was where Samuel and Avril 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 renowned institution, her father – the offspring of a Sierra Leonean father and a Caucasian parent – turned toward his heritage. When the African American poet this literary figure arrived in England in the late 19th century, the young musician eagerly sought him out. He set this literary work as a composition and the subsequent year incorporated his poetry for a stage piece, Dream Lovers. This was followed by the choral piece that established his reputation: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Drawing from this American writer’s The Song of Hiawatha, the piece was an global success, particularly among the Black community who felt shared pride as white America assessed his work by the brilliance of his music as opposed to the his background.

Advocacy and Beliefs

Recognition failed to diminish his activism. In 1900, he attended the initial Pan African gathering in the UK where he made the acquaintance of the prominent scholar WEB Du Bois and observed a variety of discussions, covering the oppression of Black South Africans. He remained an advocate until the end. He kept connections with early civil rights leaders including Du Bois and the educator Washington, gave addresses on racial equality, and even talked about racial problems with the US President 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 will endure.” He died in that year, aged 37. Yet how might her father have thought of his child’s choice to travel to this country in the that decade?

Conflict and Policy

“Offspring of Renowned Musician gives OK to S African Bias,” ran a headline in the Black American publication Jet magazine. Apartheid “appeared to me the correct approach”, Avril told Jet. When asked to explain, she qualified her remarks: she did not support with this policy “as a concept” and it “should be allowed to run its course, guided by well-meaning people of diverse ethnicities”. Had Avril been more in tune to her parent’s beliefs, or raised in the US under segregation, she might have thought twice about apartheid. But life had protected her.

Identity and Naivety

“I have a English document,” she remarked, “and the government agents never asked me about my background.” So, with her “porcelain-white” skin (as Jet put it), she traveled alongside white society, lifted by their acclaim for her deceased parent. She presented about her parent’s compositions at the educational institution and led the broadcasting ensemble in that location, programming the bold final section of her composition, titled: “In memory of my Father.” While a accomplished player on her own, she avoided playing as the lead performer in her piece. On the contrary, she invariably directed as the conductor; and so the orchestra of the era played under her baton.

Avril hoped, in her own words, she “might bring a shift”. However, by that year, the situation collapsed. Once officials learned of her African heritage, she was forced to leave the land. Her citizenship offered no defense, the UK representative urged her to go or be jailed. She returned to England, embarrassed as the extent of her innocence dawned. “This experience was a difficult one,” she stated. Increasing her disgrace was the printing that year of her ill-fated Jet interview, a year after her unceremonious exit from South Africa.

A Recurring Theme

While I reflected with these legacies, I felt a recurring theme. The narrative of holding UK citizenship until you’re not – that brings to mind troops of color who defended the English during the second world war and made it through but were not given their earned rewards. And the Windrush generation,