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This talented musician constantly felt the pressure of her father’s reputation. Being the child of the celebrated composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, one of the prominent British artists of the turn of the 20th century, the composer’s name was cloaked in the deep shadows of history.

A World Premiere

Not long ago, I sat with these shadows as I got ready to make the world premiere recording of the composer’s piano concerto from 1936. With its intense musical themes, expressive melodies, and bold rhythms, Avril’s work will grant new listeners valuable perspective into how she – an artist in conflict who entered the world in 1903 – envisioned her existence as a woman of colour.

Shadows and Truth

Yet about the past. It can take a while to adapt, to recognize outlines as they actually appear, to tell reality from distortion, and I felt hesitant to face Avril’s past for a period.

I deeply hoped Avril to be following in her father’s footsteps. In some ways, that held. The idyllic English tones of parental inspiration can be observed in several pieces, for example From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). But you only have to review the headings of her family’s music to understand how he identified as both a standard-bearer of English Romanticism and also a voice of the African diaspora.

It was here that parent and child appeared to part ways.

American society evaluated Samuel by the mastery of his compositions rather than the colour of his skin.

Samuel’s African Roots

During his studies at the renowned institution, the composer – the child of a parent from Sierra Leone and a Caucasian parent – started to lean into his background. Once the African American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar came to London in 1897, the 21-year-old composer was keen to meet him. He composed the poet’s African Romances into music and the subsequent year incorporated his poetry for a stage piece, Dream Lovers. Subsequently arrived the choral composition that made him famous: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Based on Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha, this composition was an worldwide sensation, particularly among Black Americans who felt indirect honor as the majority judged Samuel by the excellence of his music rather than the colour of his skin.

Activism and Politics

Fame did not temper his beliefs. At the turn of the century, he participated in the pioneering African conference in London where he encountered the Black American thinker WEB Du Bois and saw a range of talks, such as the oppression of African people in South Africa. He remained an advocate to his final days. He kept connections with early civil rights leaders such as the scholar and Booker T Washington, delivered his own speeches on ending discrimination, and even engaged in dialogue on issues of racism with the US President on a trip to the presidential residence in the early 1900s. In terms of his art, reminisced Du Bois, “he wrote his name so high as a musician that it will endure.” He succumbed in that year, at 37 years old. However, how would her father have thought of his daughter’s decision to work in this country in the mid-20th century?

Issues and Stance

“Child of Celebrated Artist expresses approval to S African Bias,” declared a title in the community journal Jet magazine. This policy “seems to me the right policy”, the composer stated Jet. When pushed to clarify, she backtracked: she did not support with this policy “fundamentally” and it “ought to be permitted to run its course, directed by well-meaning South Africans of diverse ethnicities”. Were the composer more aligned to her family’s principles, or from Jim Crow America, she could have hesitated about this system. Yet her life had sheltered her.

Identity and Naivety

“I possess a English document,” she stated, “and the officials did not inquire me about my ethnicity.” Therefore, with her “porcelain-white” skin (as Jet put it), she moved alongside white society, lifted by their admiration for her late father. She delivered a lecture about her family’s work at the educational institution and led the broadcasting ensemble in Johannesburg, featuring the heroic third movement of her Piano Concerto, subtitled: “Dedicated to my Father.” Although a accomplished player on her own, she avoided playing as the soloist in her work. On the contrary, she invariably directed as the conductor; and so the segregated ensemble performed under her direction.

The composer aspired, according to her, she “may foster a change”. Yet in the mid-1950s, things fell apart. Once officials learned of her Black ancestry, she could no longer stay the nation. Her citizenship didn’t protect her, the diplomatic official advised her to leave or face arrest. She went back to the UK, embarrassed as the magnitude of her naivety dawned. “The lesson was a painful one,” she stated. Compounding her embarrassment was the 1955 publication of her unfortunate magazine feature, a year after her sudden departure from the country.

A Common Narrative

As I sat with these shadows, I sensed a known narrative. The story of identifying as British until you’re not – one that calls to mind African-descended soldiers who fought on behalf of the English throughout the World War II and made it through but were denied their due compensation. And the Windrush generation,