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Avril Coleridge-Taylor constantly bore the weight of her parent’s legacy. As the offspring of the celebrated composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, a leading the prominent UK artists of the 1900s, Avril’s reputation was shrouded in the lingering obscurity of history.

The First Recording

Earlier this year, I reflected on these shadows as I made arrangements to record the world premiere recording of the composer’s 1936 piano concerto. Boasting emotional harmonies, expressive melodies, and confident beats, Avril’s work will grant new listeners valuable perspective into how this artist – a wartime composer born in 1903 – imagined her reality as a female composer of color.

Shadows and Truth

However about shadows. It requires time to adapt, to recognize outlines as they really are, to tell reality from misrepresentation, and I had been afraid to face the composer’s background for a while.

I earnestly desired her to be her father’s daughter. To some extent, she was. The pastoral English palettes of Samuel’s influence can be observed in numerous compositions, such as From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). But you only have to look at the headings of her family’s music to understand how he heard himself as not only a standard-bearer of British Romantic style as well as a voice of the Black diaspora.

At this point father and daughter appeared to part ways.

White America assessed the composer by the excellence of his compositions rather than the his ethnicity.

Parental Heritage

While he was studying at the Royal College of Music, Samuel – the offspring of a parent from Sierra Leone and a white English mother – started to lean into his African roots. Once the African American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar visited the UK in the late 19th century, the young musician eagerly sought him out. He composed the poet’s African Romances to music and the following year adapted his verses for an opera, Dream Lovers. This was followed by the choral composition that established his reputation: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Inspired by the poet Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha, the piece was an global success, notably for Black Americans who felt vicarious pride as the majority judged Samuel by the excellence of his music as opposed to the his race.

Activism and Politics

Success failed to diminish his activism. In 1900, he attended the initial Pan African gathering in London where he encountered the African American intellectual this influential figure and witnessed a range of talks, such as the oppression of the Black community there. He remained an advocate until the end. He kept connections with pioneers of civil rights like Du Bois and the educator Washington, gave addresses on ending discrimination, and even discussed racial problems with President Theodore Roosevelt on a trip to the White House in the early 1900s. Regarding his compositions, Du Bois recalled, “he wrote his name so prominently as a composer that it will endure.” He succumbed in that year, at 37 years old. But what would Samuel have reacted to his offspring’s move to work in this country in the that decade?

Conflict and Policy

“Offspring of Renowned Musician expresses approval to apartheid system,” appeared as a heading in the community journal Jet magazine. Apartheid “appeared to me the appropriate course”, the composer stated Jet. Upon further questioning, she backtracked: she didn’t agree with apartheid “in principle” and it “could be left to resolve itself, guided by well-meaning residents of diverse ethnicities”. If Avril had been more aligned to her family’s principles, or born in Jim Crow America, she could have hesitated about apartheid. However, existence had protected her.

Heritage and Innocence

“I have a UK passport,” she said, “and the authorities failed to question me about my background.” Thus, with her “fair” complexion (as described), she moved alongside white society, lifted by their praise for her renowned family member. She gave a talk about her family’s work at the Cape Town university and directed the national orchestra in that location, featuring the bold final section of her Piano Concerto, titled: “In memory of my Father.” While a confident pianist on her own, she never played as the soloist in her work. On the contrary, she invariably directed as the maestro; and so the orchestra of the era played under her baton.

Avril hoped, as she stated, she “may foster a change”. However, by that year, things fell apart. After authorities became aware of her mixed background, she could no longer stay the nation. Her citizenship didn’t protect her, the British high commissioner advised her to leave or be jailed. She went back to the UK, deeply ashamed as the magnitude of her innocence was realized. “This experience was a difficult one,” she lamented. Compounding her embarrassment was the printing that year of her unfortunate magazine feature, a year after her sudden departure from that nation.

A Common Narrative

As I sat with these legacies, I felt a familiar story. The account of holding UK citizenship until you’re not – that brings to mind Black soldiers who defended the British throughout the second world war and lived only to be not given their earned rewards. Including those from Windrush,