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Avril Coleridge-Taylor always felt the burden of her family reputation. Being the child of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, a leading the best-known English composers of the early 20th century, the composer’s identity was enveloped in the deep shadows of bygone eras.

The First Recording

Not long ago, I reflected on these shadows as I made arrangements to record the inaugural album of the composer’s piano concerto from 1936. Featuring intense musical themes, expressive melodies, and valiant rhythms, her composition will grant audiences fascinating insight into how this artist – an artist in conflict born in 1903 – envisioned her reality as a female composer of color.

Shadows and Truth

But here’s the thing about legacies. One needs patience to acclimate, to perceive forms as they actually appear, to separate fact from misrepresentation, and I was reluctant to address her history for some time.

I had so wanted her to be a reflection of her father. To some extent, she was. The rustic British sounds of parental inspiration can be heard in several pieces, including From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). However, one need only examine the titles of her family’s music to realize how he viewed himself as both a flag bearer of British Romantic style as well as a voice of the African diaspora.

It was here that parent and child began to differ.

American society judged Samuel by the excellence of his compositions instead of the his ethnicity.

Parental Heritage

While he was studying at the renowned institution, her father – the son of a parent from Sierra Leone and a Caucasian parent – began embracing his African roots. At the time the Black American writer this literary figure came to London in that era, the 21-year-old composer actively pursued him. He composed the poet’s African Romances to music and the next year adapted his verses for an opera, Dream Lovers. This was followed by the choral composition that put Samuel on the map: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Inspired by the poet Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha, Samuel’s Hiawatha was an worldwide sensation, especially with African Americans who felt indirect honor as the majority evaluated the composer by the quality of his compositions as opposed to the his background.

Activism and Politics

Recognition did not reduce his beliefs. During that period, he participated in the First Pan African Conference in the UK where he met the African American intellectual this influential figure and witnessed a series of speeches, such as the subjugation of Black South Africans. He was a campaigner until the end. He sustained relationships with early civil rights leaders including the scholar and this leader, spoke publicly on ending discrimination, and even engaged in dialogue on racial problems with the American leader on a trip to the US capital in 1904. As for his music, reminisced Du Bois, “he established his reputation so prominently as a composer that it will endure.” He died in 1912, in his thirties. Yet how might her father have reacted to his offspring’s move to travel to South Africa in the mid-20th century?

Issues and Stance

“Offspring of Renowned Musician shows support to South African policy,” declared a title in the community journal Jet magazine. Apartheid “appeared to me the appropriate course”, she informed Jet. When asked to explain, she qualified her remarks: she didn’t agree with apartheid “fundamentally” and it “could be left to run its course, guided by good-intentioned residents of diverse ethnicities”. If Avril had been more aligned to her father’s politics, or raised in segregated America, she may have reconsidered about apartheid. Yet her life had shielded her.

Heritage and Innocence

“I possess a English document,” she remarked, “and the authorities did not inquire me about my race.” So, with her “porcelain-white” complexion (according to the magazine), she floated within European circles, buoyed up by their admiration for her late father. She presented about her family’s work at the educational institution and directed the broadcasting ensemble in that location, including the heroic third movement of her concerto, subtitled: “Dedicated to my Father.” While a confident pianist herself, she never played as the featured artist in her piece. Rather, she invariably directed as the maestro; and so the apartheid orchestra played under her baton.

The composer aspired, in her own words, she “might bring a change”. However, by that year, the situation collapsed. When government agents discovered her Black ancestry, she had to depart the nation. Her citizenship didn’t protect her, the diplomatic official recommended her departure or face arrest. She returned to England, feeling great shame as the magnitude of her inexperience became clear. “This experience was a hard one,” she stated. Adding to her disgrace was the release in 1955 of her unfortunate magazine feature, a year after her sudden departure from South Africa.

A Recurring Theme

Upon contemplating with these memories, I perceived a familiar story. The narrative of holding UK citizenship until it’s revoked – one that calls to mind Black soldiers who served for the English in the global conflict and made it through but were not given their earned rewards. And the Windrush generation,