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Avril Coleridge-Taylor always felt the burden of her family legacy. As the offspring of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, one of the most famous British composers of the early 20th century, her name was shrouded in the long shadows of the past.

An Inaugural Recording

Earlier this year, I contemplated these memories as I prepared to record the inaugural album of her concerto for piano composed in 1936. Featuring impassioned harmonies, soulful lyricism, and valiant rhythms, this piece will offer audiences fascinating insight into how she – a composer during war originating from the early 1900s – conceived of her world as a female composer of color.

Shadows and Truth

However about shadows. One needs patience to adapt, to see shapes as they actually appear, to distinguish truth from distortion, and I felt hesitant to confront the composer’s background for a while.

I deeply hoped her to be her father’s daughter. To some extent, this was true. The pastoral English palettes of Samuel’s influence can be detected in numerous compositions, for example From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). But you only have to examine the headings of her father’s compositions to understand how he identified as both a standard-bearer of British Romantic style and also a advocate of the Black diaspora.

It was here that Samuel and Avril began to differ.

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

Samuel’s African Roots

While he was studying at the prestigious music college, her father – the child of a Sierra Leonean father and a Caucasian parent – started to lean into his African roots. When the poet of color the renowned Dunbar came to London in that era, the 21-year-old composer actively pursued him. He adapted this literary work as a composition and the next year used the poet’s words for a musical work, Dream Lovers. Subsequently arrived the choral work that put Samuel on the map: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Inspired by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha, this composition was an global success, notably for Black Americans who felt vicarious pride as white America assessed his work by the excellence of his compositions as opposed to the his background.

Advocacy and Beliefs

Fame failed to diminish his beliefs. In 1900, he attended the First Pan African Conference in England where he met the Black American thinker this influential figure and saw a range of talks, such as the subjugation of the Black community there. He remained an advocate to his final days. He sustained relationships with pioneers of civil rights like Du Bois and the educator Washington, spoke publicly on equality for all, and even engaged in dialogue on racial problems with the American leader while visiting to the US capital in 1904. In terms of his art, the scholar reflected, “he made his mark so high as a creative artist that it cannot soon be forgotten.” He succumbed in 1912, at 37 years old. Yet how might her father have reacted to his child’s choice to travel to the African nation in the that decade?

Issues and Stance

“Child of Celebrated Artist shows support to South African policy,” declared a title in the African American magazine Jet magazine. The system “seems to me the right policy”, the composer stated Jet. When asked to explain, she revised her statement: she didn’t agree with this policy “in principle” and it “could be left to run its course, overseen by well-meaning South Africans of diverse ethnicities”. Had Avril been more in tune to her father’s politics, or born in Jim Crow America, she could have hesitated about the policy. However, existence had shielded her.

Identity and Naivety

“I hold a British passport,” she remarked, “and the officials never asked me about my ethnicity.” So, with her “fair” skin (as described), she traveled among the Europeans, supported by their acclaim for her deceased parent. She gave a talk about her family’s work at the Cape Town university and led the South African Broadcasting Corporation Orchestra in the city, featuring the inspiring part of her composition, named: “In remembrance of my Father.” While a confident pianist personally, she avoided playing as the lead performer in her concerto. On the contrary, she consistently conducted as the leader; and so the apartheid orchestra played under her baton.

Avril hoped, in her own words, she “might bring a transformation”. However, by that year, circumstances deteriorated. After authorities discovered her mixed background, she had to depart the land. Her citizenship failed to safeguard her, the diplomatic official advised her to leave or be jailed. She went back to the UK, embarrassed as the extent of her naivety dawned. “The realization was a difficult one,” she lamented. Adding to her humiliation was the printing that year of her ill-fated Jet interview, a year after her forced leaving from the country.

A Common Narrative

While I reflected with these shadows, I sensed a known narrative. The narrative of holding UK citizenship until it’s revoked – which recalls troops of color who fought on behalf of the English in the second world war and lived only to be not given their earned rewards. And the Windrush generation,