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Avril Coleridge-Taylor continually experienced the weight of her father’s reputation. As the offspring of the renowned Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, one of the most famous English composers of the early 20th century, the composer’s reputation was cloaked in the lingering obscurity of history.

An Inaugural Recording

Earlier this year, I sat with these memories as I made arrangements to produce the first-ever recording of the composer’s 1936 piano concerto. Boasting impassioned harmonies, soulful lyricism, and confident beats, her composition will offer audiences fascinating insight into how the composer – a wartime composer born in 1903 – conceived of her existence as a woman of colour.

Shadows and Truth

However about legacies. It can take a while to adapt, to see shapes as they really are, to distinguish truth from misrepresentation, and I was reluctant to address Avril’s past for some time.

I had so wanted her to be her father’s daughter. Partially, she was. The idyllic English tones of parental inspiration can be detected in many of her works, including From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). However, one need only review the names of her father’s compositions to realize how he identified as not just a standard-bearer of English Romanticism but a representative of the African heritage.

At this point parent and child seemed to diverge.

The United States evaluated Samuel by the excellence of his music rather than the colour of his skin.

Parental Heritage

During his studies at the Royal College of Music, the composer – the child of a African father and a Caucasian parent – turned toward his background. At the time the Black American writer this literary figure visited the UK in that era, the young musician actively pursued him. He set the poet’s African Romances to music and the subsequent year incorporated his poetry for a musical work, Dream Lovers. Then came the choral work that established his reputation: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Based on the poet Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha, the piece was an global success, notably for Black Americans who felt indirect honor as white America assessed his work by the excellence of his compositions rather than the colour of his skin.

Advocacy and Beliefs

Success failed to diminish Samuel’s politics. During that period, he was present at the First Pan African Conference in the UK where he met the African American intellectual the renowned Du Bois and saw a variety of discussions, including on the subjugation of African people in South Africa. He was a campaigner until the end. He maintained ties with early civil rights leaders including this intellectual and the educator Washington, spoke publicly on equality for all, and even discussed issues of racism with the American leader during an invitation to the White House in that year. Regarding his compositions, Du Bois recalled, “he established his reputation so prominently as a creative artist that it will endure.” He succumbed in 1912, in his thirties. But what would her father have thought of his child’s choice to be in the African nation in the mid-20th century?

Issues and Stance

“Daughter of Famous Composer shows support to S African Bias,” ran a headline in the community journal Jet magazine. The system “seems to me the correct approach”, she informed Jet. When pushed to clarify, she qualified her remarks: she did not support with apartheid “in principle” and it “ought to be permitted to work itself out, overseen by good-intentioned people of every background”. Had Avril been more aligned to her parent’s beliefs, or born in segregated America, she may have reconsidered about the policy. Yet her life had protected her.

Heritage and Innocence

“I hold a UK passport,” she stated, “and the government agents never asked me about my race.” So, with her “porcelain-white” skin (according to the magazine), she floated within European circles, supported by their praise for her late father. She delivered a lecture about her parent’s compositions at the Cape Town university and led the national orchestra in the city, programming the bold final section of her composition, named: “Dedicated to my Father.” Even though a skilled pianist personally, she never played as the lead performer in her concerto. On the contrary, she invariably directed as the maestro; and so the segregated ensemble performed under her direction.

Avril hoped, in her own words, she “could introduce a shift”. However, by that year, things fell apart. Once officials became aware of her African heritage, she was forced to leave the land. Her British passport offered no defense, the diplomatic official advised her to leave or risk imprisonment. She came home, feeling great shame as the magnitude of her naivety was realized. “The lesson was a difficult one,” she expressed. Increasing her embarrassment was the printing that year of her unfortunate magazine feature, a year after her forced leaving from that nation.

A Familiar Story

Upon contemplating with these shadows, I felt a recurring theme. The story of holding UK citizenship until you’re not – that brings to mind troops of color who defended the British during the second world war and made it through but were refused rightful benefits. And the Windrush generation,