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The composer Avril Coleridge-Taylor continually bore the burden of her family heritage. As the daughter of the celebrated composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, among the most famous UK musicians of the early 20th century, Avril’s reputation was cloaked in the lingering obscurity of bygone eras.

An Inaugural Recording

In recent months, I contemplated these shadows as I prepared to make the first-ever recording of Avril’s concerto for piano composed in 1936. Featuring intense musical themes, heartfelt tunes, and valiant rhythms, this piece will grant audiences fascinating insight into how the composer – a wartime composer born in 1903 – conceived of her reality as a woman of colour.

Shadows and Truth

Yet about legacies. One needs patience to adjust, to recognize outlines as they really are, to distinguish truth from distortion, and I had been afraid to address Avril’s past for some time.

I deeply hoped Avril to be following in her father’s footsteps. To some extent, this was true. The idyllic English tones of her father’s impact can be observed in many of her works, for example From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). But you only have to review the headings of her family’s music to see how he viewed himself as both a champion of British Romantic style and also a advocate of the African heritage.

At this point parent and child began to differ.

American society assessed the composer by the brilliance of his art as opposed to the his ethnicity.

Samuel’s African Roots

While he was studying at the Royal College of Music, the composer – the child of a parent from Sierra Leone and a Caucasian parent – turned toward his African roots. Once the African American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar visited the UK in that era, the young musician was keen to meet him. He adapted the poet’s African Romances as a composition and the subsequent year adapted his verses for an opera, Dream Lovers. This was followed by the choral composition that made him famous: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Drawing from this American writer’s The Song of Hiawatha, Samuel’s Hiawatha was an worldwide sensation, especially with the Black community who felt vicarious pride as white America evaluated the composer by the quality of his art rather than the colour of his skin.

Principles and Actions

Success did not temper his activism. In 1900, he participated in the pioneering African conference in the UK where he made the acquaintance of the Black American thinker the renowned Du Bois and witnessed a variety of discussions, including on the mistreatment of Black South Africans. He was an activist until the end. He kept connections with pioneers of civil rights such as the scholar and the educator Washington, spoke publicly on ending discrimination, and even discussed matters of race with the US President during an invitation to the US capital in the early 1900s. In terms of his art, the scholar reflected, “he established his reputation so prominently as a creative artist that it will endure.” He died in the early 20th century, in his thirties. However, how would Samuel have thought of his offspring’s move to work in South Africa in the 1950s?

Controversy and Apartheid

“Child of Celebrated Artist expresses approval to apartheid system,” ran a headline in the community journal Jet magazine. The system “appeared to me the correct approach”, the composer stated Jet. When asked to explain, she qualified her remarks: she did not support with the system “fundamentally” and it “could be left to work itself out, overseen by well-meaning South Africans of every background”. Had Avril been more attuned to her family’s principles, or from Jim Crow America, she may have reconsidered about this system. However, existence had shielded her.

Identity and Naivety

“I have a British passport,” she said, “and the officials did not inquire me about my ethnicity.” Thus, with her “light” complexion (according to the magazine), she traveled alongside white society, buoyed up by their admiration for her late father. She delivered a lecture about her family’s work at the University of Cape Town and led the national orchestra in the city, featuring the heroic third movement of her Piano Concerto, named: “In memory of my Father.” Although a confident pianist personally, she did not perform as the featured artist in her piece. On the contrary, she consistently conducted as the maestro; and so the orchestra of the era played under her baton.

The composer aspired, according to her, she “might bring a transformation”. But by 1954, things fell apart. Once officials learned of her African heritage, she had to depart the nation. Her UK document offered no defense, the UK representative advised her to leave or be jailed. She returned to England, embarrassed as the magnitude of her inexperience was realized. “The realization was a difficult one,” she stated. Increasing her humiliation was the release in 1955 of her controversial discussion, a year after her sudden departure from that nation.

A Common Narrative

As I sat with these legacies, I felt a recurring theme. The narrative of being British until it’s revoked – that brings to mind Black soldiers who defended the British in the second world war and survived only to be not given their earned rewards. Including those from Windrush,