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The composer Avril Coleridge-Taylor constantly bore the pressure of her family legacy. As the offspring of the renowned Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, among the best-known British artists of the 1900s, her reputation was enveloped in the deep shadows of history.

The First Recording

In recent months, I sat with these legacies as I got ready to produce the inaugural album of her 1936 piano concerto. Boasting emotional harmonies, heartfelt tunes, and valiant rhythms, Avril’s work will grant audiences valuable perspective into how this artist – a composer during war originating from the early 1900s – imagined her reality as a female composer of color.

Past and Present

Yet about shadows. One needs patience to adjust, to recognize outlines as they actually appear, to distinguish truth from misrepresentation, and I had been afraid to confront the composer’s background for some time.

I had so wanted her to be her father’s daughter. In some ways, she was. The rustic British sounds of Samuel’s influence can be detected in several pieces, such as From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). However, one need only review the titles of her father’s compositions to understand how he identified as both a standard-bearer of British Romantic style but a voice of the Black diaspora.

At this point father and daughter appeared to part ways.

American society assessed the composer by the mastery of his music as opposed to the his racial background.

Parental Heritage

As a student at the Royal College of Music, the composer – the son of a African father and a Caucasian parent – started to lean into his background. Once the poet of color the renowned Dunbar came to London in 1897, the young musician eagerly sought him out. He composed the poet’s African Romances as a composition and the subsequent year used the poet’s words for a musical work, Dream Lovers. This was followed by the choral work that put Samuel on the map: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Drawing from this American writer’s The Song of Hiawatha, Samuel’s Hiawatha was an worldwide sensation, especially with the Black community who felt indirect honor as American society evaluated the composer by the excellence of his art rather than the his race.

Advocacy and Beliefs

Fame did not temper his beliefs. At the turn of the century, he participated in the initial Pan African gathering in England where he made the acquaintance of the Black American thinker WEB Du Bois and witnessed a variety of discussions, such as the mistreatment of African people in South Africa. He was an activist to his final days. He kept connections with early civil rights leaders such as the scholar and Booker T Washington, gave addresses on ending discrimination, and even engaged in dialogue on matters of race with the American leader during an invitation to the US capital in the early 1900s. Regarding his compositions, the scholar reflected, “he established his reputation so prominently as a composer that it will endure.” He passed away in 1912, at 37 years old. However, how would her father have thought of his daughter’s decision to be in South Africa in the that decade?

Issues and Stance

“Daughter of Famous Composer gives OK to S African Bias,” ran a headline in the African American magazine Jet magazine. This policy “seems to me the correct approach”, she informed Jet. Upon further questioning, she revised her statement: she didn’t agree with this policy “fundamentally” and it “could be left to run its course, guided by well-meaning residents of every background”. If Avril had been more in tune to her father’s politics, or raised in the US under segregation, she may have reconsidered about the policy. Yet her life had shielded her.

Heritage and Innocence

“I hold a English document,” she remarked, “and the government agents never asked me about my race.” Therefore, with her “light” appearance (as Jet put it), she moved within European circles, buoyed up by their admiration for her deceased parent. She delivered a lecture about her parent’s compositions at the University of Cape Town and directed the South African Broadcasting Corporation Orchestra in Johannesburg, including the inspiring part of her concerto, titled: “Dedicated to my Father.” Even though a accomplished player on her own, she did not perform as the soloist in her concerto. Rather, she invariably directed as the leader; and so the apartheid orchestra performed under her direction.

Avril hoped, as she stated, she “might bring a change”. However, by that year, circumstances deteriorated. After authorities became aware of her mixed background, she could no longer stay the country. Her British passport failed to safeguard her, the British high commissioner recommended her departure or risk imprisonment. She returned to England, feeling great shame as the scale of her inexperience became clear. “The lesson was a difficult one,” she stated. Adding to her humiliation was the 1955 publication of her ill-fated Jet interview, a year after her sudden departure from South Africa.

A Familiar Story

While I reflected with these memories, I felt a recurring theme. The story of holding UK citizenship until you’re not – which recalls African-descended soldiers who fought on behalf of the UK in the second world war and made it through but were not given their earned rewards. And the Windrush generation,