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Avril Coleridge-Taylor constantly bore the burden of her parent’s reputation. As the offspring of the celebrated composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, a leading the best-known UK artists of the turn of the 20th century, her name was enveloped in the long shadows of bygone eras.

An Inaugural Recording

Earlier this year, I sat with these shadows as I prepared to produce the first-ever recording of the composer’s 1936 piano concerto. With its impassioned harmonies, heartfelt tunes, and bold rhythms, this piece will offer music lovers fascinating insight into how she – a wartime composer who entered the world in 1903 – envisioned her world as a artist with mixed heritage.

Legacy and Reality

Yet about legacies. One needs patience to adapt, to recognize outlines as they truly exist, to distinguish truth from misinterpretation, and I was reluctant to address Avril’s past for a while.

I had so wanted Avril to be following in her father’s footsteps. In some ways, that held. The rustic British sounds of her father’s impact can be detected in numerous compositions, for example From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). But you only have to look at the titles of her father’s compositions to see how he heard himself as not just a flag bearer of English Romanticism as well as a advocate of the African diaspora.

It was here that father and daughter began to differ.

The United States evaluated Samuel by the brilliance of his compositions as opposed to the his racial background.

Family Background

As a student at the prestigious music college, her father – the son of a Sierra Leonean father and a Caucasian parent – started to lean into his heritage. Once the Black American writer this literary figure arrived in England in 1897, the aspiring artist eagerly sought him out. He set Dunbar’s African Romances as a composition and the following year incorporated his poetry for a stage piece, Dream Lovers. Then came the choral piece that put Samuel on the map: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Drawing from the poet Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha, Samuel’s Hiawatha was an global success, especially with African Americans who felt vicarious pride as American society assessed his work by the brilliance of his music as opposed to the his background.

Principles and Actions

Fame did not temper his activism. At the turn of the century, he participated in the initial Pan African gathering in the UK where he met the prominent scholar the renowned Du Bois and saw a series of speeches, covering the subjugation of the Black community there. He remained an advocate to his final days. He maintained ties with trailblazers for equality including this intellectual and Booker T Washington, delivered his own speeches on equality for all, and even talked about matters of race with President Theodore Roosevelt on a trip to the White House in that year. As for his music, Du Bois recalled, “he established his reputation so prominently as a composer that it will long be remembered.” He died in that year, in his thirties. Yet how might her father have made of his offspring’s move to travel to the African nation in the 1950s?

Controversy and Apartheid

“Offspring of Renowned Musician expresses approval to apartheid system,” ran a headline in the African American magazine Jet magazine. The system “appeared to me the appropriate course”, she informed Jet. When asked to explain, she qualified her remarks: she was not in favor with this policy “in principle” and it “could be left to resolve itself, overseen by good-intentioned people of all races”. Had Avril been more attuned to her parent’s beliefs, or raised in Jim Crow America, she might have thought twice about apartheid. However, existence had shielded her.

Identity and Naivety

“I have a English document,” she stated, “and the government agents did not inquire me about my background.” Therefore, with her “light” skin (as Jet put it), she traveled alongside white society, supported by their acclaim for her renowned family member. She gave a talk about her family’s work at the educational institution and directed the broadcasting ensemble in Johannesburg, including the inspiring part of her composition, subtitled: “Dedicated to my Father.” Even though a confident pianist herself, she did not perform as the featured artist in her work. Rather, she invariably directed as the leader; and so the apartheid orchestra performed under her direction.

She desired, in her own words, she “might bring a shift”. Yet in the mid-1950s, circumstances deteriorated. Once officials discovered her Black ancestry, she could no longer stay the land. Her citizenship offered no defense, the diplomatic official advised her to leave or be jailed. She returned to England, deeply ashamed as the scale of her inexperience dawned. “This experience was a difficult one,” she lamented. Increasing her humiliation was the 1955 publication of her unfortunate magazine feature, a year after her sudden departure from that nation.

A Common Narrative

Upon contemplating with these legacies, I felt a known narrative. The story of identifying as British until it’s revoked – that brings to mind Black soldiers who fought on behalf of the English during the second world war and made it through but were denied their due compensation. And the Windrush generation,