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This talented musician always bore the weight of her father’s reputation. Being the child of the celebrated composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, one of the best-known British composers of the turn of the 20th century, her reputation was enveloped in the long shadows of bygone eras.

The First Recording

Earlier this year, I contemplated these shadows as I made arrangements to produce the first-ever recording of her 1936 piano concerto. Featuring intense musical themes, heartfelt tunes, and bold rhythms, her composition will grant audiences deep understanding into how she – a composer during war originating from the early 1900s – envisioned her reality as a female composer of color.

Shadows and Truth

But here’s the thing about legacies. It can take a while to adjust, to recognize outlines as they really are, to tell reality from distortion, and I had been afraid to face Avril’s past for some time.

I had so wanted Avril to be following in her father’s footsteps. In some ways, that held. The rustic British sounds of her father’s impact can be detected in many of her works, for example From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). Yet it suffices to look at the titles of her parent’s works to understand how he viewed himself as not only a champion of British Romantic style and also a advocate of the Black diaspora.

It was here that Samuel and Avril began to differ.

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

Parental Heritage

While he was studying at the renowned institution, her father – the child of a parent from Sierra Leone and a British mother – turned toward his African roots. Once the poet of color this literary figure visited the UK in the late 19th century, the 21-year-old composer actively pursued him. He set this literary work as a composition and the following year used the poet’s words for a musical work, Dream Lovers. Then came the choral piece that put Samuel on the map: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Drawing from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha, this composition was an international hit, notably for African Americans who felt indirect honor as white America judged Samuel by the quality of his music rather than the his background.

Advocacy and Beliefs

Fame did not temper Samuel’s politics. At the turn of the century, he attended the initial Pan African gathering in London where he made the acquaintance of the African American intellectual WEB Du Bois and saw a range of talks, covering the oppression of African people in South Africa. He was an activist until the end. He maintained ties with pioneers of civil rights including this intellectual and Booker T Washington, spoke publicly on racial equality, and even talked about matters of race with the American leader while visiting to the White House in that year. Regarding his compositions, reminisced Du Bois, “he wrote his name so notably as a composer that it will endure.” He died in the early 20th century, aged 37. However, how would Samuel have made of his daughter’s decision to travel to the African nation in the mid-20th century?

Controversy and Apartheid

“Offspring of Renowned Musician expresses approval to South African policy,” ran a headline in the community journal Jet magazine. Apartheid “appeared to me the correct approach”, the composer stated Jet. When asked to explain, she revised her statement: she did not support with apartheid “fundamentally” and it “ought to be permitted to resolve itself, guided by good-intentioned South Africans of every background”. If Avril had been more in tune to her family’s principles, or raised in segregated America, she may have reconsidered about this system. However, existence had protected her.

Identity and Naivety

“I have a UK passport,” she said, “and the officials failed to question me about my ethnicity.” Thus, with her “light” skin (as described), she moved among the Europeans, supported by their admiration for her deceased parent. She delivered a lecture about her father’s music at the University of Cape Town and led the broadcasting ensemble in that location, featuring the bold final section of her composition, named: “Dedicated to my Father.” Although a accomplished player on her own, she did not perform as the lead performer in her piece. Instead, she invariably directed as the conductor; and so the segregated ensemble performed under her direction.

She desired, in her own words, she “might bring a change”. However, by that year, the situation collapsed. After authorities learned of her African heritage, she was forced to leave the land. Her citizenship didn’t protect her, the British high commissioner recommended her departure or be jailed. She returned to England, embarrassed as the magnitude of her naivety was realized. “The realization was a painful one,” she expressed. Adding to her embarrassment was the release in 1955 of her ill-fated Jet interview, a year after her sudden departure from the country.

A Familiar Story

While I reflected with these shadows, I perceived a recurring theme. The account of holding UK citizenship until you’re not – one that calls to mind troops of color who fought on behalf of the British during the global conflict and survived only to be denied their due compensation. And the Windrush generation,