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Avril Coleridge-Taylor continually bore the weight of her father’s heritage. Being the child of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, a leading the prominent British composers of the turn of the 20th century, her reputation was cloaked in the lingering obscurity of history.

An Inaugural Recording

Not long ago, I contemplated these shadows as I got ready to produce the inaugural album of the composer’s 1936 piano concerto. With its emotional harmonies, heartfelt tunes, and bold rhythms, her composition will offer music lovers valuable perspective into how this artist – an artist in conflict born in 1903 – imagined her world as a woman of colour.

Shadows and Truth

Yet about legacies. It can take a while to adjust, to see shapes as they actually appear, to separate fact from misinterpretation, and I had been afraid to address Avril’s past for some time.

I earnestly desired Avril to be her father’s daughter. Partially, this was true. The pastoral English palettes of parental inspiration can be detected in numerous compositions, including From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). However, one need only look at the headings of her family’s music to see how he heard himself as both a flag bearer of English Romanticism and also a voice of the African diaspora.

It was here that parent and child began to differ.

White America assessed the composer by the brilliance of his art instead of the his ethnicity.

Family Background

During his studies at the renowned institution, her father – the offspring of a Sierra Leonean father and a white English mother – started to lean into his heritage. At the time the Black American writer this literary figure visited the UK in that era, the 21-year-old composer actively pursued him. He composed this literary work as a composition and the subsequent year incorporated his poetry for a stage piece, Dream Lovers. This was followed by the choral piece that established his reputation: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Based on this American writer’s The Song of Hiawatha, Samuel’s Hiawatha was an worldwide sensation, especially with the Black community who felt indirect honor as white America evaluated the composer by the quality of his art as opposed to the colour of his skin.

Activism and Politics

Success failed to diminish his beliefs. During that period, he was present at the First Pan African Conference in England where he encountered the Black American thinker the renowned Du Bois and observed a variety of discussions, including on the mistreatment of the Black community there. He remained an advocate to his final days. He sustained relationships with pioneers of civil rights including the scholar and the educator Washington, spoke publicly on ending discrimination, and even engaged in dialogue on issues of racism with the American leader while visiting to the White House in the early 1900s. Regarding his compositions, the scholar reflected, “he wrote his name so high as a creative artist that it will endure.” He passed away in the early 20th century, in his thirties. Yet how might the composer have reacted to his child’s choice to be in the African nation in the 1950s?

Issues and Stance

“Offspring of Renowned Musician shows support to South African policy,” ran a headline in the Black American publication Jet magazine. Apartheid “appeared to me the appropriate course”, the composer stated Jet. When asked to explain, she qualified her remarks: she did not support with the system “fundamentally” and it “should be allowed to resolve itself, directed by well-meaning people of all races”. If Avril had been more attuned to her parent’s beliefs, or raised in the US under segregation, she could have hesitated about apartheid. Yet her life had shielded her.

Identity and Naivety

“I hold a UK passport,” she stated, “and the officials did not inquire me about my ethnicity.” So, with her “light” appearance (as Jet put it), she traveled among the Europeans, supported by their admiration for her renowned family member. She presented about her parent’s compositions at the Cape Town university and led the broadcasting ensemble in the city, programming the heroic third movement of her Piano Concerto, named: “Dedicated to my Father.” While a skilled pianist personally, she did not perform as the lead performer in her concerto. On the contrary, she always led as the conductor; and so the segregated ensemble performed under her direction.

Avril hoped, according to her, she “could introduce a change”. Yet in the mid-1950s, circumstances deteriorated. When government agents discovered her mixed background, she was forced to leave the country. Her citizenship didn’t protect her, the UK representative advised her to leave or risk imprisonment. She went back to the UK, feeling great shame as the extent of her inexperience was realized. “This experience was a painful one,” she expressed. Adding to her embarrassment was the release in 1955 of her controversial discussion, a year after her unceremonious exit from the country.

A Common Narrative

As I sat with these shadows, I perceived a known narrative. The narrative of holding UK citizenship until you’re not – that brings to mind Black soldiers who defended the English in the global conflict and survived only to be not given their earned rewards. Including those from Windrush,