🔗 Share this article

This talented musician constantly experienced the pressure of her parent’s heritage. Being the child of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, a leading the prominent British composers of the early 20th century, the composer’s identity was cloaked in the lingering obscurity of the past.

The First Recording

Not long ago, I contemplated these memories as I made arrangements to record the inaugural album of Avril’s 1936 piano concerto. With its emotional harmonies, expressive melodies, and bold rhythms, Avril’s work will offer new listeners fascinating insight into how the composer – a composer during war who entered the world in 1903 – imagined her reality as a artist with mixed heritage.

Shadows and Truth

However about the past. It requires time to acclimate, to see shapes as they actually appear, to tell reality from distortion, and I felt hesitant to confront her history for a while.

I had so wanted the composer to be her father’s daughter. In some ways, she was. The rustic British sounds of parental inspiration can be observed in several pieces, including From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). However, one need only look at the names of her family’s music to see how he heard himself as both a champion of UK romantic tradition but a voice of the African heritage.

It was here that parent and child seemed to diverge.

American society judged Samuel by the brilliance of his compositions as opposed to the colour of his skin.

Samuel’s African Roots

During his studies at the prestigious music college, Samuel – the son of a African father and a Caucasian parent – began embracing his background. At the time the Black American writer this literary figure visited the UK in the late 19th century, the young musician eagerly sought him out. He adapted Dunbar’s African Romances to music and the next year adapted his verses for a musical work, Dream Lovers. Subsequently arrived the choral piece that put Samuel on the map: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Inspired by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha, this composition was an international hit, notably for the Black community who felt vicarious pride as white America judged Samuel by the excellence of his music instead of the his race.

Activism and Politics

Success did not temper his beliefs. At the turn of the century, he attended the initial Pan African gathering in London where he met the African American intellectual this influential figure and observed a range of talks, including on the mistreatment of African people in South Africa. He remained an advocate throughout his life. He maintained ties with trailblazers for equality such as the scholar and the educator Washington, delivered his own speeches on equality for all, and even talked about issues of racism with President Theodore Roosevelt during an invitation to the presidential residence in that year. Regarding his compositions, reminisced Du Bois, “he established his reputation so prominently as a creative artist that it will long be remembered.” He passed away in the early 20th century, in his thirties. Yet how might the composer have thought of his offspring’s move to work in this country in the 1950s?

Conflict and Policy

“Child of Celebrated Artist expresses approval to apartheid system,” declared a title in the Black American publication Jet magazine. The system “struck me as the correct approach”, she informed Jet. When pushed to clarify, she revised her statement: she did not support with this policy “as a concept” and it “could be left to resolve itself, directed by benevolent people of every background”. Were the composer more aligned to her family’s principles, or raised in the US under segregation, she may have reconsidered about the policy. Yet her life had sheltered her.

Heritage and Innocence

“I have a UK passport,” she remarked, “and the government agents failed to question me about my ethnicity.” Thus, with her “porcelain-white” complexion (according to the magazine), she moved alongside white society, lifted by their admiration for her renowned family member. She presented about her father’s music at the Cape Town university and directed the national orchestra in the city, programming the bold final section of her composition, subtitled: “In memory of my Father.” While a confident pianist personally, she avoided playing as the soloist in her piece. Instead, she always led as the leader; and so the apartheid orchestra played under her baton.

Avril hoped, according to her, she “could introduce a transformation”. Yet in the mid-1950s, the situation collapsed. When government agents learned of her mixed background, she could no longer stay the nation. Her British passport offered no defense, the UK representative urged her to go or face arrest. She returned to England, embarrassed as the magnitude of her naivety dawned. “The realization was a difficult one,” she expressed. Compounding her humiliation was the 1955 publication of her unfortunate magazine feature, a year after her forced leaving from the country.

A Familiar Story

While I reflected with these shadows, I sensed a familiar story. The story of holding UK citizenship until you’re not – one that calls to mind troops of color who fought on behalf of the British throughout the global conflict and made it through but were denied their due compensation. Along with the Windrush era,