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This talented musician always felt the weight of her father’s legacy. Being the child of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, a leading the best-known English artists of the turn of the 20th century, the composer’s reputation was shrouded in the deep shadows of bygone eras.

A World Premiere

Not long ago, I sat with these legacies as I made arrangements to make the first-ever recording of Avril’s 1936 piano concerto. With its emotional harmonies, expressive melodies, and confident beats, her composition will grant audiences deep understanding into how this artist – an artist in conflict originating from the early 1900s – imagined her world as a woman of colour.

Shadows and Truth

But here’s the thing about legacies. It requires time to adjust, to recognize outlines as they actually appear, to tell reality from misinterpretation, and I had been afraid to confront her history for a period.

I deeply hoped Avril to be a reflection of her father. To some extent, this was true. The rustic British sounds of Samuel’s influence can be heard in numerous compositions, such as From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). But you only have to examine the names of her father’s compositions to see how he viewed himself as both a standard-bearer of British Romantic style but a voice of the African heritage.

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

The United States judged Samuel by the brilliance of his compositions rather than the his ethnicity.

Parental Heritage

As a student at the prestigious music college, Samuel – the son of a African father and a British mother – started to lean into his African roots. Once the Black American writer the renowned Dunbar visited the UK in that era, the 21-year-old composer actively pursued him. He set the poet’s African Romances as a composition and the next year used the poet’s words for an opera, Dream Lovers. Subsequently arrived the choral composition that put Samuel on the map: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Based on Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha, this composition was an worldwide sensation, especially with the Black community who felt indirect honor as white America evaluated the composer by the quality of his music rather than the colour of his skin.

Activism and Politics

Fame did not temper his beliefs. In 1900, he was present at the First Pan African Conference in London where he met the African American intellectual WEB Du Bois and witnessed a range of talks, such as the subjugation of Black South Africans. He was an activist until the end. He kept connections with early civil rights leaders such as the scholar and this leader, gave addresses on equality for all, and even discussed issues of racism with the American leader on a trip to the presidential residence in 1904. Regarding his compositions, reminisced Du Bois, “he established his reputation so prominently as a creative artist that it will long be remembered.” He died in 1912, at 37 years old. But what would the composer have made of his child’s choice to be in South Africa in the 1950s?

Conflict and Policy

“Offspring of Renowned Musician gives OK to South African policy,” appeared as a heading in the Black American publication Jet magazine. Apartheid “struck me as the right policy”, the composer stated Jet. When asked to explain, she backtracked: she didn’t agree with apartheid “fundamentally” and it “could be left to resolve itself, guided by good-intentioned residents of diverse ethnicities”. Had Avril been more attuned to her parent’s beliefs, or raised in Jim Crow America, she may have reconsidered about this system. But life had sheltered her.

Heritage and Innocence

“I have a British passport,” she stated, “and the authorities did not inquire me about my background.” So, with her “porcelain-white” skin (as Jet put it), she floated within European circles, buoyed up by their acclaim for her late father. She delivered a lecture about her family’s work at the educational institution and conducted the national orchestra in the city, including the bold final section of her concerto, named: “Dedicated to my Father.” Although a confident pianist personally, she never played as the soloist in her piece. Instead, she always led as the leader; and so the segregated ensemble followed her lead.

Avril hoped, as she stated, she “might bring a change”. Yet in the mid-1950s, circumstances deteriorated. Once officials learned of her Black ancestry, she was forced to leave the nation. Her UK document didn’t protect her, the British high commissioner advised her to leave or be jailed. She went back to the UK, feeling great shame as the magnitude of her innocence became clear. “The realization was a painful one,” she stated. Increasing her disgrace was the release in 1955 of her unfortunate magazine feature, a year after her sudden departure from South Africa.

A Familiar Story

As I sat with these shadows, I sensed a known narrative. The narrative of identifying as British until you’re not – one that calls to mind Black soldiers who defended the UK during the World War II and survived only to be denied their due compensation. Including those from Windrush,