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The composer Avril Coleridge-Taylor continually bore the burden of her family heritage. As the offspring of the celebrated composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, among the best-known British musicians of the early 20th century, the composer’s reputation was enveloped in the long shadows of bygone eras.

The First Recording

In recent months, I contemplated these shadows as I got ready to make the world premiere recording of Avril’s piano concerto from 1936. With its emotional harmonies, expressive melodies, and valiant rhythms, her composition will grant audiences deep understanding into how the composer – a composer during war born in 1903 – conceived of her world as a female composer of color.

Shadows and Truth

However about the past. It requires time to adjust, to perceive forms as they actually appear, to tell reality from distortion, and I felt hesitant to address the composer’s background for some time.

I earnestly desired her to be following in her father’s footsteps. To some extent, this was true. The pastoral English palettes of Samuel’s influence can be heard in many of her works, for example From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). However, one need only look at the headings of her parent’s works to understand how he heard himself as not just a champion of English Romanticism and also a representative of the African heritage.

This was where father and daughter began to differ.

White America judged Samuel by the mastery of his compositions rather than the his racial background.

Samuel’s African Roots

While he was studying at the Royal College of Music, Samuel – the offspring of a African father and a white English mother – started to lean into his heritage. At the time the Black American writer the renowned Dunbar came to London in that era, the aspiring artist actively pursued him. He set Dunbar’s African Romances into music and the subsequent year used the poet’s words for a musical work, Dream Lovers. This was followed by the choral composition that made him famous: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Based on Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha, the piece was an worldwide sensation, especially with African Americans who felt vicarious pride as the majority assessed his work by the quality of his art instead of the colour of his skin.

Principles and Actions

Success failed to diminish Samuel’s politics. In 1900, he was present at the initial Pan African gathering in the UK where he made the acquaintance of the African American intellectual WEB Du Bois and saw a variety of discussions, including on the mistreatment of African people in South Africa. He was a campaigner to his final days. He kept connections with early civil rights leaders such as the scholar and Booker T Washington, spoke publicly on equality for all, and even talked about matters of race with the American leader during an invitation to the US capital in that year. As for his music, reminisced Du Bois, “he wrote his name so prominently as a musician that it will endure.” He died in that year, in his thirties. But what would the composer have thought of his offspring’s move to travel to the African nation in the that decade?

Issues and Stance

“Offspring of Renowned Musician shows support to apartheid system,” appeared as a heading in the African American magazine Jet magazine. Apartheid “appeared to me the correct approach”, Avril told Jet. Upon further questioning, she qualified her remarks: she did not support with apartheid “as a concept” and it “could be left to run its course, overseen by good-intentioned people of every background”. Had Avril been more in tune to her parent’s beliefs, or from Jim Crow America, she might have thought twice about this system. But life had sheltered her.

Identity and Naivety

“I possess a English document,” she said, “and the government agents did not inquire me about my background.” So, with her “porcelain-white” complexion (according to the magazine), she traveled among the Europeans, lifted by their admiration for her renowned family member. She delivered a lecture about her father’s music at the Cape Town university and conducted the South African Broadcasting Corporation Orchestra in the city, featuring the bold final section of her concerto, subtitled: “In memory of my Father.” Although a accomplished player personally, she avoided playing as the lead performer in her concerto. Instead, she consistently conducted as the leader; and so the segregated ensemble followed her lead.

Avril hoped, in her own words, she “could introduce a transformation”. However, by that year, things fell apart. After authorities learned of her mixed background, she was forced to leave the country. Her citizenship offered no defense, the UK representative advised her to leave or face arrest. She went back to the UK, deeply ashamed as the magnitude of her innocence was realized. “The lesson was a difficult one,” she stated. Adding to her embarrassment was the release in 1955 of her ill-fated Jet interview, a year after her unceremonious exit from that nation.

A Familiar Story

Upon contemplating with these memories, I sensed a known narrative. The story of holding UK citizenship until it’s revoked – which recalls African-descended soldiers who defended the British throughout the World War II and made it through but were refused rightful benefits. Including those from Windrush,