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The composer Avril Coleridge-Taylor constantly experienced the weight of her family heritage. As the daughter of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, among the best-known UK artists of the turn of the 20th century, her reputation was shrouded in the deep shadows of the past.

An Inaugural Recording

In recent months, I contemplated these shadows as I made arrangements to make the inaugural album of her piano concerto from 1936. Featuring emotional harmonies, expressive melodies, and valiant rhythms, this piece will grant music lovers valuable perspective into how the composer – an artist in conflict who entered the world in 1903 – envisioned her reality as a female composer of color.

Legacy and Reality

But here’s the thing about shadows. One needs patience to adapt, to recognize outlines as they truly exist, to tell reality from misrepresentation, and I was reluctant to address the composer’s background for some time.

I deeply hoped Avril to be a reflection of her father. Partially, that held. The idyllic English tones 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 examine the names of her parent’s works to see how he viewed himself as not just a champion of English Romanticism as well as a advocate of the African diaspora.

It was here that father and daughter seemed to diverge.

White America evaluated Samuel by the excellence of his compositions instead of the his ethnicity.

Samuel’s African Roots

As a student at the Royal College of Music, her father – the child of a parent from Sierra Leone and a Caucasian parent – turned toward his heritage. Once the poet of color Paul Laurence Dunbar visited the UK in the late 19th century, the 21-year-old composer actively pursued him. He adapted the poet’s African Romances into music and the subsequent year used the poet’s words for a stage piece, Dream Lovers. This was followed by the choral work that made him famous: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Inspired by this American writer’s The Song of Hiawatha, Samuel’s Hiawatha was an international hit, notably for Black Americans who felt vicarious pride as American society evaluated the composer by the quality of his compositions instead of the his race.

Advocacy and Beliefs

Success failed to diminish Samuel’s politics. In 1900, he participated in the First Pan African Conference in England where he met the African American intellectual WEB Du Bois and observed a variety of discussions, such as the oppression of African people in South Africa. He was an activist throughout his life. He sustained relationships with trailblazers for equality including the scholar and the educator Washington, gave addresses on racial equality, and even talked about matters of race with the US President on a trip to the presidential residence in the early 1900s. As for his music, Du Bois recalled, “he wrote his name so notably as a composer that it will long be remembered.” He died in the early 20th century, in his thirties. However, how would her father have thought of his offspring’s move to travel to South Africa in the that decade?

Conflict and Policy

“Child of Celebrated Artist gives OK to apartheid system,” declared a title in the Black American publication Jet magazine. This policy “seems to me the right policy”, she informed Jet. Upon further questioning, she qualified her remarks: she was not in favor with apartheid “in principle” and it “could be left to work itself out, overseen by well-meaning people of all races”. Were the composer more attuned to her parent’s beliefs, or raised in the US under segregation, she may have reconsidered about apartheid. But life had protected her.

Heritage and Innocence

“I possess a British passport,” she said, “and the authorities failed to question me about my race.” So, with her “light” appearance (according to the magazine), she floated alongside white society, supported by their praise for her deceased parent. She delivered a lecture about her father’s music at the Cape Town university and conducted the South African Broadcasting Corporation Orchestra in the city, featuring the inspiring part of her composition, titled: “In memory of my Father.” While a confident pianist personally, she avoided playing as the lead performer in her concerto. Rather, she invariably directed as the conductor; and so the orchestra of the era performed under her direction.

She desired, according to her, she “might bring a shift”. Yet in the mid-1950s, the situation collapsed. Once officials learned of her mixed background, she could no longer stay the nation. Her citizenship didn’t protect her, the diplomatic official advised her to leave or be jailed. She returned to England, embarrassed as the extent of her innocence became clear. “This experience was a painful one,” she lamented. Increasing her disgrace was the release in 1955 of her controversial discussion, a year after her unceremonious exit from the country.

A Familiar Story

As I sat with these shadows, I sensed a recurring theme. The account of identifying as British until you’re not – one that calls to mind African-descended soldiers who served for the English throughout the global conflict and survived only to be refused rightful benefits. And the Windrush generation,