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This talented musician continually bore the pressure of her family reputation. As the offspring of the renowned Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, one of the best-known UK artists of the turn of the 20th century, her name was cloaked in the long shadows of history.

The First Recording

Earlier this year, I contemplated these shadows as I prepared to record the inaugural album of her piano concerto from 1936. Boasting impassioned harmonies, expressive melodies, and bold rhythms, Avril’s work will offer music lovers valuable perspective into how she – a composer during war who entered the world in 1903 – conceived of her reality as a woman of colour.

Past and Present

But here’s the thing about legacies. It requires time to adapt, to perceive forms as they truly exist, to tell reality from misinterpretation, and I was reluctant to face the composer’s background for a period.

I deeply hoped her to be a reflection of her father. In some ways, she was. The rustic British sounds of Samuel’s influence can be observed in numerous compositions, including From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). But you only have to look at the names of her father’s compositions to understand how he viewed himself as not just a champion of English Romanticism and also a representative of the African diaspora.

This was where father and daughter began to differ.

American society judged Samuel by the excellence of his music rather than the colour of his skin.

Samuel’s African Roots

While he was studying at the renowned institution, her father – the offspring of a African father and a Caucasian parent – turned toward his background. At the time the poet of color the renowned Dunbar arrived in England in that era, the 21-year-old composer actively pursued him. He set this literary work into music and the subsequent year used the poet’s words for a musical work, Dream Lovers. Subsequently arrived 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 international hit, especially with African Americans who felt indirect honor as white America assessed his work by the excellence of his compositions as opposed to the colour of his skin.

Activism and Politics

Success failed to diminish his activism. At the turn of the century, he was present at the pioneering African conference in England where he encountered the African American intellectual the renowned Du Bois and saw a variety of discussions, including on the oppression of the Black community there. He was an activist throughout his life. He maintained ties with trailblazers for equality including Du Bois and the educator Washington, delivered his own speeches on racial equality, and even discussed issues of racism with the US President while visiting to the presidential residence in 1904. As for his music, the scholar reflected, “he established his reputation so notably as a composer that it will endure.” He passed away in the early 20th century, at 37 years old. However, how would her father have made of his daughter’s decision to travel to the African nation in the mid-20th century?

Controversy and Apartheid

“Daughter of Famous Composer gives OK to S African Bias,” declared a title in the community journal Jet magazine. This policy “struck me as the appropriate course”, Avril told Jet. When asked to explain, she revised her statement: she didn’t agree with this policy “fundamentally” and it “could be left to run its course, guided by benevolent residents of every background”. If Avril had been more attuned to her family’s principles, or from the US under segregation, she could have hesitated about this system. However, existence had shielded her.

Heritage and Innocence

“I have a English document,” she stated, “and the authorities never asked me about my race.” Thus, with her “porcelain-white” complexion (as Jet put it), she traveled alongside white society, buoyed up by their acclaim for her late father. She presented about her family’s work at the educational institution and directed the South African Broadcasting Corporation Orchestra in Johannesburg, featuring the bold final section of her concerto, subtitled: “In remembrance of my Father.” Even though a confident pianist on her own, she avoided playing as the soloist in her work. Instead, she always led as the conductor; and so the segregated ensemble performed under her direction.

She desired, in her own words, she “may foster a shift”. But by 1954, circumstances deteriorated. Once officials learned of her mixed background, she was forced to leave the country. Her UK document didn’t protect her, the diplomatic official recommended her departure or risk imprisonment. She returned to England, deeply ashamed as the scale of her naivety dawned. “The lesson was a painful one,” she stated. Compounding her humiliation was the 1955 publication of her ill-fated Jet interview, a year after her forced leaving from that nation.

A Common Narrative

As I sat with these memories, I perceived a recurring theme. The account of identifying as British until you’re not – that brings to mind Black soldiers who defended the UK in the second world war and survived only to be denied their due compensation. Including those from Windrush,