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The composer Avril Coleridge-Taylor continually bore the pressure of her family reputation. As the daughter of the renowned Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, among the best-known UK artists of the 1900s, Avril’s reputation was cloaked in the long shadows of history.

The First Recording

Not long ago, I sat with these shadows as I prepared to record the inaugural album of Avril’s 1936 piano concerto. With its intense musical themes, soulful lyricism, and bold rhythms, Avril’s work will grant audiences valuable perspective into how she – an artist in conflict who entered the world in 1903 – envisioned her reality as a female composer of color.

Legacy and Reality

Yet about legacies. One needs patience to adapt, to perceive forms as they actually appear, to separate fact from distortion, and I was reluctant to face Avril’s past for a period.

I deeply hoped the composer to be following in her father’s footsteps. In some ways, this was true. The pastoral English palettes of parental inspiration can be observed in several pieces, including From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). But you only have to look at the headings of her family’s music to see how he viewed himself as both a champion of British Romantic style and also a advocate of the Black diaspora.

At this point father and daughter seemed to diverge.

The United States judged Samuel by the excellence of his music instead of the colour of his skin.

Parental Heritage

As a student at the renowned institution, Samuel – the son of a parent from Sierra Leone and a British mother – began embracing his background. At the time the Black American writer this literary figure came to London in the late 19th century, the young musician actively pursued him. He adapted the poet’s African Romances as a composition and the subsequent year used the poet’s words for a musical work, Dream Lovers. Then came the choral composition that made him famous: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Drawing from the poet Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha, Samuel’s Hiawatha was an global success, particularly among Black Americans who felt shared pride as the majority judged Samuel by the excellence of his music instead of the colour of his skin.

Advocacy and Beliefs

Recognition did not reduce his activism. During that period, he attended the initial Pan African gathering in London where he made the acquaintance of the African American intellectual the renowned Du Bois and witnessed a series of speeches, covering the oppression of Black South Africans. He remained an advocate throughout his life. He sustained relationships with pioneers of civil rights including Du Bois and Booker T Washington, delivered his own speeches on racial equality, and even engaged in dialogue on racial problems with the US President during an invitation to the White House in 1904. In terms of his art, the scholar reflected, “he established his reputation so high as a musician that it will long be remembered.” He succumbed in the early 20th century, in his thirties. However, how would the composer have thought of his child’s choice to be in South Africa in the that decade?

Controversy and Apartheid

“Offspring of Renowned Musician expresses approval to South African policy,” declared a title in the community journal Jet magazine. This policy “seems to me the correct approach”, she informed Jet. When pushed to clarify, she qualified her remarks: she was not in favor with apartheid “fundamentally” and it “could be left to resolve itself, directed by well-meaning residents of diverse ethnicities”. Had Avril been more aligned to her family’s principles, or born in Jim Crow America, she could have hesitated about apartheid. Yet her life had shielded her.

Heritage and Innocence

“I have a English document,” she said, “and the officials failed to question me about my ethnicity.” So, with her “porcelain-white” appearance (as Jet put it), she moved alongside white society, lifted by their acclaim for her deceased parent. She gave a talk about her family’s work at the University of Cape Town and directed the South African Broadcasting Corporation Orchestra in the city, featuring the inspiring part of her concerto, titled: “Dedicated to my Father.” While a skilled pianist herself, she avoided playing as the soloist in her work. On the contrary, she invariably directed as the leader; and so the segregated ensemble played under her baton.

Avril hoped, in her own words, she “might bring a transformation”. However, by that year, things fell apart. Once officials discovered her African heritage, she had to depart the nation. Her British passport offered no defense, the UK representative urged her to go or be jailed. She returned to England, embarrassed as the scale of her innocence dawned. “The realization was a difficult one,” she lamented. Compounding her disgrace was the printing that year of her ill-fated Jet interview, a year after her unceremonious exit from the country.

A Common Narrative

As I sat with these shadows, I perceived a known narrative. The story of identifying as British until it’s revoked – one that calls to mind troops of color who defended the English in the second world war and survived only to be not given their earned rewards. Including those from Windrush,