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The composer Avril Coleridge-Taylor constantly experienced the weight of her parent’s heritage. As the offspring of the renowned Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, among the best-known British artists of the early 20th century, the composer’s reputation was shrouded in the lingering obscurity of bygone eras.

An Inaugural Recording

In recent months, I contemplated these memories as I prepared to produce the world premiere recording of Avril’s piano concerto from 1936. Featuring impassioned harmonies, expressive melodies, and bold rhythms, this piece will provide audiences fascinating insight into how she – a composer during war who entered the world in 1903 – imagined her existence as a female composer of color.

Shadows and Truth

But here’s the thing about shadows. It can take a while to adjust, to perceive forms as they truly exist, to tell reality from misrepresentation, and I had been afraid to confront Avril’s past for some time.

I had so wanted her to be following in her father’s footsteps. Partially, that held. The idyllic English tones of parental inspiration can be detected in numerous compositions, including From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). Yet it suffices to look at the headings of her father’s compositions to realize how he identified as not just a champion of English Romanticism and also a representative of the African diaspora.

At this point parent and child seemed to diverge.

White America judged Samuel by the brilliance of his compositions instead of the his ethnicity.

Parental Heritage

During his studies at the renowned institution, Samuel – the son of a parent from Sierra Leone and a British mother – began embracing his background. Once the Black American writer Paul Laurence Dunbar arrived in England in 1897, the 21-year-old composer was keen to meet him. He composed this literary work as a composition and the following year used the poet’s words for a musical work, Dream Lovers. Subsequently arrived the choral piece that established his reputation: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Based on the poet Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha, this composition was an international hit, particularly among African Americans who felt shared pride as the majority assessed his work by the excellence of his art as opposed to the his background.

Principles and Actions

Fame did not temper Samuel’s politics. During that period, he was present at the pioneering African conference in the UK where he made the acquaintance of the Black American thinker this influential figure and observed a range of talks, covering the oppression of African people in South Africa. He remained an advocate to his final days. He maintained ties with trailblazers for equality such as Du Bois and the educator Washington, delivered his own speeches on ending discrimination, and even engaged in dialogue on matters of race with the US President during an invitation to the US capital in 1904. As for his music, Du Bois recalled, “he made his mark so high as a musician that it will long be remembered.” He succumbed in the early 20th century, in his thirties. Yet how might the composer have thought of his offspring’s move to travel to South Africa in the mid-20th century?

Conflict and Policy

“Offspring of Renowned Musician expresses approval to apartheid system,” ran a headline in the community journal Jet magazine. Apartheid “appeared to me the appropriate course”, the composer stated Jet. When pushed to clarify, she qualified her remarks: she did not support with this policy “fundamentally” and it “could be left to run its course, directed by benevolent South Africans of diverse ethnicities”. Were the composer more in tune to her family’s principles, or from Jim Crow America, she might have thought twice about the policy. However, existence had sheltered her.

Identity and Naivety

“I have a English document,” she stated, “and the officials never asked me about my race.” Thus, with her “light” skin (as described), she floated among the Europeans, supported by their acclaim for her late father. She delivered a lecture about her father’s music at the Cape Town university and conducted the South African Broadcasting Corporation Orchestra in that location, programming the heroic third movement of her composition, named: “Dedicated to my Father.” While a confident pianist herself, she avoided playing as the soloist in her piece. Instead, she invariably directed as the conductor; and so the segregated ensemble played under her baton.

Avril hoped, as she stated, she “might bring a shift”. But by 1954, the situation collapsed. Once officials discovered her mixed background, she had to depart the country. Her British passport offered no defense, the British high commissioner recommended her departure or face arrest. She went back to the UK, feeling great shame as the scale of her inexperience was realized. “This experience was a difficult one,” she expressed. Increasing her disgrace was the printing that year of her ill-fated Jet interview, a year after her sudden departure from the country.

A Familiar Story

Upon contemplating with these shadows, I felt a familiar story. The account of being British until it’s revoked – one that calls to mind Black soldiers who served for the UK throughout the second world war and made it through but were denied their due compensation. Including those from Windrush,