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This talented musician continually experienced the burden of her father’s heritage. Being the child of the celebrated composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, a leading the prominent English composers of the early 20th century, her name was shrouded in the long shadows of the past.

The First Recording

Earlier this year, I contemplated these memories as I made arrangements to make the inaugural album of the composer’s concerto for piano composed in 1936. Boasting emotional harmonies, expressive melodies, and valiant rhythms, Avril’s work will offer new listeners deep understanding into how she – a wartime composer who entered the world in 1903 – imagined her existence as a artist with mixed heritage.

Past and Present

But here’s the thing about legacies. One needs patience to adjust, to see shapes as they truly exist, to tell reality from misinterpretation, and I was reluctant to face her history for some time.

I earnestly desired Avril to be her father’s daughter. In some ways, that held. The rustic British sounds of parental inspiration can be observed in many of her works, for example 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 identified as not only a flag bearer of UK romantic tradition as well as a representative of the Black diaspora.

At this point father and daughter appeared to part ways.

The United States evaluated Samuel by the brilliance of his art rather than the colour of his skin.

Family Background

As a student at the prestigious music college, the composer – the son of a African father and a British mother – turned toward his background. When the Black American writer this literary figure arrived in England in 1897, the aspiring artist was keen to meet him. He composed this literary work to music and the subsequent year incorporated his poetry for a musical work, Dream Lovers. Then came the choral piece that established his reputation: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Drawing from the poet Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha, this composition was an global success, especially with African Americans who felt shared pride as white America evaluated the composer by the excellence of his art instead of the colour of his skin.

Advocacy and Beliefs

Success did not reduce Samuel’s politics. At the turn of the century, he attended the First Pan African Conference in London where he made the acquaintance of the African American intellectual WEB Du Bois and witnessed a variety of discussions, including on the mistreatment of Black South Africans. He remained an advocate until the end. He sustained relationships with trailblazers for equality such as Du Bois and this leader, delivered his own speeches on racial equality, and even engaged in dialogue on matters of race with the American leader during an invitation to the US capital in 1904. In terms of his art, the scholar reflected, “he wrote his name so prominently as a creative artist that it will long be remembered.” He died in the early 20th century, at 37 years old. Yet how might her father have made of his offspring’s move to travel to South Africa in the that decade?

Controversy and Apartheid

“Offspring of Renowned Musician gives OK to apartheid system,” declared a title in the community journal Jet magazine. The system “struck me as the right policy”, she informed Jet. When asked to explain, she revised her statement: she did not support with the system “fundamentally” and it “could be left to run its course, overseen by well-meaning South Africans of diverse ethnicities”. Were the composer more attuned to her family’s principles, or born in the US under segregation, she could have hesitated about apartheid. However, existence had sheltered her.

Background and Inexperience

“I have a British passport,” she remarked, “and the authorities never asked me about my background.” So, with her “fair” skin (according to the magazine), she traveled among the Europeans, lifted by their acclaim for her late father. She delivered a lecture about her family’s work at the University of Cape Town and directed the broadcasting ensemble in Johannesburg, featuring the bold final section of her composition, titled: “In memory of my Father.” Even though a accomplished player on her own, she did not perform as the lead performer in her concerto. Rather, she invariably directed as the conductor; and so the apartheid orchestra performed under her direction.

The composer aspired, as she stated, she “might bring a transformation”. However, by that year, circumstances deteriorated. After authorities discovered her Black ancestry, she could no longer stay the country. Her UK document didn’t protect her, the UK representative urged her to go or be jailed. She went back to the UK, embarrassed as the extent of her naivety was realized. “The realization was a painful one,” she stated. Adding to her embarrassment was the printing that year of her unfortunate magazine feature, a year after her forced leaving from South Africa.

A Common Narrative

Upon contemplating with these memories, I sensed a recurring theme. The story of identifying as British until it’s challenged – one that calls to mind Black soldiers who defended the English in the World War II and made it through but were refused rightful benefits. And the Windrush generation,