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Avril Coleridge-Taylor constantly felt the weight of her father’s legacy. As the daughter of the renowned Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, one of the most famous UK artists of the early 20th century, the composer’s reputation was shrouded in the long shadows of history.

An Inaugural Recording

In recent months, I sat with these legacies as I made arrangements to make the inaugural album of her piano concerto from 1936. With its intense musical themes, soulful lyricism, and confident beats, this piece will grant audiences fascinating insight into how this artist – a composer during war originating from the early 1900s – envisioned her reality as a artist with mixed heritage.

Past and Present

However about legacies. It can take a while to adjust, to recognize outlines as they actually appear, to separate fact from misinterpretation, and I felt hesitant to confront Avril’s past for some time.

I had so wanted the composer to be following in her father’s footsteps. To some extent, that held. The pastoral English palettes of her father’s impact can be heard in several pieces, including From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). However, one need only look at the names of her father’s compositions to see how he identified as both a standard-bearer of UK romantic tradition as well as a voice of the African diaspora.

This was where parent and child appeared to part ways.

White America evaluated Samuel by the excellence of his music rather than the his racial background.

Family Background

As a student at the renowned institution, the composer – the son of a Sierra Leonean father and a British mother – started to lean into his heritage. At the time the African American poet the renowned Dunbar arrived in England in 1897, the aspiring artist was keen to meet him. He set the poet’s African Romances into music and the next year incorporated his poetry for an opera, Dream Lovers. Subsequently arrived the choral work that put Samuel on the map: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Based on the poet Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha, this composition was an international hit, notably for the Black community who felt vicarious pride as white America judged Samuel by the quality of his music rather than the his background.

Advocacy and Beliefs

Fame did not reduce Samuel’s politics. At the turn of the century, he participated in the initial Pan African gathering in London where he encountered the African American intellectual the renowned Du Bois and observed a series of speeches, covering the oppression of the Black community there. He was a campaigner throughout his life. He kept connections with trailblazers for equality like the scholar and the educator Washington, spoke publicly on equality for all, and even discussed issues of racism with the US President on a trip to the White House in 1904. Regarding his compositions, reminisced Du Bois, “he made his mark so notably as a musician that it will endure.” He died in 1912, at 37 years old. Yet how might the composer have made of his offspring’s move to work in the African nation in the mid-20th century?

Conflict and Policy

“Child of Celebrated Artist expresses approval to South African policy,” appeared as a heading in the Black American publication Jet magazine. Apartheid “appeared to me the correct approach”, Avril told Jet. When asked to explain, she revised her statement: she did not support with the system “in principle” and it “could be left to run its course, overseen by good-intentioned South Africans of diverse ethnicities”. Had Avril been more aligned to her parent’s beliefs, or raised in the US under segregation, she could have hesitated about this system. However, existence had sheltered her.

Heritage and Innocence

“I have a UK passport,” she stated, “and the officials did not inquire me about my ethnicity.” So, with her “light” skin (as Jet put it), she floated within European circles, supported by their acclaim for her late father. She gave a talk about her family’s work at the University of Cape Town and conducted the broadcasting ensemble in the city, programming the heroic third movement of her Piano Concerto, subtitled: “Dedicated to my Father.” Even though a confident pianist on her own, she did not perform as the lead performer in her work. Rather, she consistently conducted as the leader; and so the orchestra of the era performed under her direction.

She desired, in her own words, she “may foster a change”. Yet in the mid-1950s, circumstances deteriorated. After authorities learned of her mixed background, she was forced to leave the country. Her UK document offered no defense, the UK representative advised her to leave or risk imprisonment. She returned to England, feeling great shame as the magnitude of her naivety became clear. “This experience was a hard one,” she stated. Adding to her humiliation was the printing that year of her ill-fated Jet interview, a year after her sudden departure from South Africa.

A Recurring Theme

As I sat with these shadows, I perceived a familiar story. The narrative of being British until it’s revoked – one that calls to mind Black soldiers who fought on behalf of the English throughout the second world war and made it through but were refused rightful benefits. And the Windrush generation,