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This talented musician constantly felt the pressure of her father’s legacy. Being the child of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, one of the best-known UK musicians of the 1900s, Avril’s name was shrouded in the lingering obscurity of the past.

The First Recording

Earlier this year, I sat with these shadows as I made arrangements to make the world premiere recording of her concerto for piano composed in 1936. Boasting emotional harmonies, soulful lyricism, and confident beats, her composition will grant new listeners valuable perspective into how this artist – an artist in conflict who entered the world in 1903 – imagined her reality as a woman of colour.

Legacy and Reality

But here’s the thing about the past. One needs patience to adapt, to perceive forms as they really are, to distinguish truth from misrepresentation, and I felt hesitant to address the composer’s background for some time.

I deeply hoped Avril to be following in her father’s footsteps. To some extent, she was. The pastoral English palettes of parental inspiration can be detected in numerous compositions, including From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). But you only have to look at the titles of her parent’s works to see how he identified as not just a champion of English Romanticism but a representative of the African diaspora.

This was where Samuel and Avril appeared to part ways.

White America evaluated Samuel by the mastery of his art as opposed to the his ethnicity.

Parental Heritage

While he was studying at the renowned institution, her father – the son of a African father and a British mother – began embracing his African roots. Once the Black American writer this literary figure came to London in 1897, the aspiring artist was keen to meet him. He composed Dunbar’s African Romances as a composition and the subsequent year used the poet’s words for an opera, Dream Lovers. Then came the choral piece that established his reputation: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Inspired by this American writer’s The Song of Hiawatha, this composition was an international hit, especially with Black Americans who felt vicarious pride as the majority evaluated the composer by the quality of his music rather than the his background.

Advocacy and Beliefs

Success did not reduce Samuel’s politics. During that period, he attended the First Pan African Conference in England where he met the Black American thinker WEB Du Bois and saw a series of speeches, including on the mistreatment of Black South Africans. He remained an advocate to his final days. He maintained ties with trailblazers for equality like Du Bois and the educator Washington, spoke publicly on racial equality, and even discussed racial problems with President Theodore Roosevelt during an invitation to the White House in that year. Regarding his compositions, the scholar reflected, “he wrote his name so prominently as a musician that it will endure.” He died in that year, at 37 years old. But what would the composer have reacted to his daughter’s decision to work in this country in the mid-20th century?

Issues and Stance

“Offspring of Renowned Musician expresses approval to South African policy,” declared a title in the community journal Jet magazine. The system “seems to me the appropriate course”, Avril told Jet. When pushed to clarify, she revised her statement: she didn’t agree with apartheid “in principle” and it “should be allowed to resolve itself, overseen by well-meaning South Africans of all races”. Were the composer more attuned to her father’s politics, or from Jim Crow America, she might have thought twice about apartheid. But life had protected her.

Heritage and Innocence

“I hold a UK passport,” she stated, “and the government agents failed to question me about my race.” Thus, with her “porcelain-white” skin (as Jet put it), she floated alongside white society, lifted by their acclaim for her late father. She delivered a lecture about her parent’s compositions at the Cape Town university and led the South African Broadcasting Corporation Orchestra in Johannesburg, programming the bold final section of her composition, named: “In remembrance of my Father.” While a accomplished player herself, she did not perform as the lead performer in her piece. Instead, she invariably directed as the conductor; and so the orchestra of the era performed under her direction.

The composer aspired, according to her, she “may foster a change”. However, by that year, the situation collapsed. Once officials learned of her mixed background, she had to depart the nation. Her British passport failed to safeguard her, the diplomatic official advised her to leave or risk imprisonment. She returned to England, deeply ashamed as the scale of her inexperience dawned. “This experience was a difficult one,” she stated. Increasing her embarrassment was the printing that year of her ill-fated Jet interview, a year after her forced leaving from the country.

A Common Narrative

Upon contemplating with these shadows, I sensed a known narrative. The narrative of holding UK citizenship until it’s challenged – which recalls troops of color who served for the British during the global conflict and survived only to be not given their earned rewards. Including those from Windrush,