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The composer Avril Coleridge-Taylor constantly bore the burden of her father’s heritage. Being the child of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, a leading the prominent UK artists of the 1900s, the composer’s name was shrouded in the deep shadows of history.

An Inaugural Recording

In recent months, I reflected on these shadows as I prepared to record the inaugural album of her 1936 piano concerto. Boasting emotional harmonies, expressive melodies, and confident beats, this piece will provide new listeners deep understanding into how the composer – an artist in conflict born in 1903 – conceived of her existence as a woman of colour.

Past and Present

Yet about shadows. It requires time to acclimate, to see shapes as they truly exist, to separate fact from misinterpretation, and I felt hesitant to face her history for a while.

I had so wanted the composer to be her father’s daughter. In some ways, that held. The pastoral English palettes of her father’s impact can be heard in many of her works, such as From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). However, one need only examine the titles of her family’s music to understand how he heard himself as both a flag bearer of UK romantic tradition and also a voice of the African diaspora.

At this point Samuel and Avril seemed to diverge.

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

Family Background

During his studies at the Royal College of Music, Samuel – the child of a parent from Sierra Leone and a British mother – started to lean into his background. When the Black American writer the renowned Dunbar arrived in England in 1897, the young musician was keen to meet him. He set Dunbar’s African Romances into music and the subsequent year incorporated his poetry for a musical work, Dream Lovers. Subsequently arrived the choral work that put Samuel on the map: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Inspired by the poet Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha, the piece was an international hit, particularly among the Black community who felt shared pride as American society judged Samuel by the quality of his compositions instead of the his background.

Principles and Actions

Success did not reduce Samuel’s politics. During that period, he attended the First Pan African Conference in the UK where he met the Black American thinker WEB Du Bois and observed a variety of discussions, such as the oppression of African people in South Africa. He was an activist to his final days. He kept connections with early civil rights leaders including this intellectual and the educator Washington, gave addresses on racial equality, and even talked about matters of race with President Theodore Roosevelt on a trip to the presidential residence in 1904. As for his music, reminisced Du Bois, “he established his reputation so notably as a composer that it cannot soon be forgotten.” He passed away in the early 20th century, in his thirties. But what would Samuel have reacted to his child’s choice to be in the African nation in the mid-20th century?

Conflict and Policy

“Child of Celebrated Artist shows support to apartheid system,” declared a title in the African American magazine Jet magazine. Apartheid “struck me as the right policy”, she informed Jet. When pushed to clarify, she qualified her remarks: she did not support with the system “as a concept” and it “ought to be permitted to resolve itself, guided by benevolent South Africans of diverse ethnicities”. If Avril had been more aligned to her father’s politics, or raised in Jim Crow America, she might have thought twice about the policy. Yet her life had sheltered her.

Background and Inexperience

“I possess a UK passport,” she said, “and the authorities did not inquire me about my race.” So, with her “fair” appearance (as described), she moved alongside white society, buoyed up by their praise for her deceased parent. She gave a talk about her parent’s compositions at the University of Cape Town and conducted the national orchestra in that location, featuring the heroic third movement of her composition, named: “In memory of my Father.” Although a accomplished player herself, she never played as the soloist in her piece. Rather, she consistently conducted as the maestro; and so the apartheid orchestra followed her lead.

The composer aspired, according to her, she “might bring a transformation”. However, by that year, things fell apart. When government agents discovered her mixed background, she could no longer stay the land. Her citizenship offered no defense, the diplomatic official recommended her departure or risk imprisonment. She returned to England, embarrassed as the magnitude of her naivety became clear. “This experience was a difficult one,” she lamented. Increasing her humiliation was the 1955 publication of her controversial discussion, a year after her unceremonious exit from South Africa.

A Recurring Theme

Upon contemplating with these legacies, I perceived a known narrative. The narrative of identifying as British until it’s revoked – that brings to mind Black soldiers who served for the British in the World War II and lived only to be not given their earned rewards. And the Windrush generation,