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The composer Avril Coleridge-Taylor always felt the burden of her father’s legacy. As the daughter of the renowned Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, a leading the best-known British musicians of the early 20th century, her identity was cloaked in the lingering obscurity of history.

A World Premiere

Earlier this year, I sat with these legacies as I prepared to produce the inaugural album of the composer’s 1936 piano concerto. Boasting emotional harmonies, heartfelt tunes, and valiant rhythms, this piece will grant music lovers fascinating insight into how this artist – a wartime composer originating from the early 1900s – conceived of her existence as a woman of colour.

Past and Present

But here’s the thing about shadows. It requires time to adapt, to perceive forms as they truly exist, to separate fact from misrepresentation, and I felt hesitant to face the composer’s background for some time.

I earnestly desired the composer to be her father’s daughter. To some extent, that held. The pastoral English palettes of parental inspiration can be detected in numerous compositions, such as 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 viewed himself as not only a flag bearer of English Romanticism and also a representative of the African diaspora.

This was where Samuel and Avril appeared to part ways.

White America assessed the composer by the mastery of his compositions as opposed to the his ethnicity.

Samuel’s African Roots

During his studies at the prestigious music college, the composer – the offspring of a Sierra Leonean father and a British mother – began embracing his heritage. When the poet of color the renowned Dunbar came to London in the late 19th century, the young musician was keen to meet him. He set Dunbar’s African Romances to music and the following year adapted his verses for a stage piece, Dream Lovers. Subsequently arrived the choral piece that put Samuel on the map: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Based on the poet Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha, Samuel’s Hiawatha was an global success, notably for the Black community who felt indirect honor as the majority evaluated the composer by the brilliance of his music instead of the his race.

Activism and Politics

Recognition failed to diminish his activism. In 1900, he attended the First Pan African Conference in London where he encountered the Black American thinker the renowned Du Bois and witnessed a range of talks, covering the subjugation of Black South Africans. He was an activist until the end. He kept connections with early civil rights leaders like the scholar and this leader, delivered his own speeches on racial equality, and even discussed racial problems with the US President on a trip to the White House in that year. Regarding his compositions, reminisced Du Bois, “he made his mark so notably as a creative artist that it will endure.” He died in that year, aged 37. But what would Samuel have thought of his daughter’s decision to be in the African nation in the 1950s?

Issues and Stance

“Offspring of Renowned Musician expresses approval to South African policy,” declared a title in the African American magazine Jet magazine. Apartheid “struck me as the right policy”, she informed Jet. When pushed to clarify, she backtracked: she did not support with the system “fundamentally” and it “should be allowed to run its course, overseen by well-meaning South Africans of every background”. Had Avril been more attuned to her family’s principles, or raised in segregated America, she could have hesitated about apartheid. But life had sheltered her.

Identity and Naivety

“I hold a British passport,” she remarked, “and the officials failed to question me about my ethnicity.” Thus, with her “fair” skin (according to the magazine), she traveled within European circles, lifted by their acclaim for her renowned family member. She delivered a lecture about her family’s work at the educational institution and conducted the national orchestra in Johannesburg, including the bold final section of her concerto, titled: “Dedicated to my Father.” While a confident pianist herself, she never played as the soloist in her concerto. On the contrary, she consistently conducted as the leader; and so the segregated ensemble performed under her direction.

The composer aspired, as she stated, she “might bring a change”. Yet in the mid-1950s, the situation collapsed. When government agents discovered her mixed background, she had to depart the country. Her citizenship offered no defense, the UK representative recommended her departure or face arrest. She went back to the UK, feeling great shame as the scale of her inexperience was realized. “The lesson was a difficult one,” she expressed. Adding to her humiliation was the printing that year of her controversial discussion, a year after her forced leaving from that nation.

A Recurring Theme

As I sat with these memories, I sensed a familiar story. The account of holding UK citizenship until you’re not – which recalls African-descended soldiers who served for the UK throughout the World War II and made it through but were not given their earned rewards. Including those from Windrush,