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The composer Avril Coleridge-Taylor always experienced the weight of her father’s legacy. As the daughter of the renowned Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, one of the prominent UK musicians of the 1900s, her identity was cloaked in the deep shadows of history.

An Inaugural Recording

In recent months, I contemplated these shadows as I prepared to make the world premiere recording of Avril’s piano concerto from 1936. Boasting emotional harmonies, expressive melodies, and confident beats, Avril’s work will grant new listeners valuable perspective into how she – a composer during war originating from the early 1900s – envisioned her reality as a artist with mixed heritage.

Legacy and Reality

But here’s the thing about the past. It can take a while to adjust, to see shapes as they really are, to separate fact from misrepresentation, and I was reluctant to address the composer’s background for a while.

I had so wanted her to be a reflection of her father. In some ways, this was true. The idyllic English tones of parental inspiration can be detected in several pieces, including From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). But you only have to look at the headings of her father’s compositions to realize how he identified as not only a flag bearer of UK romantic tradition and also a voice of the African heritage.

It was here that parent and child began to differ.

American society assessed the composer by the brilliance of his music rather than the his ethnicity.

Samuel’s African Roots

While he was studying at the Royal College of Music, her father – the son of a African father and a white English mother – started to lean into his African roots. At the time the African American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar visited the UK in that era, the young musician actively pursued him. He adapted Dunbar’s African Romances as a composition and the next year adapted his verses for a musical work, Dream Lovers. Then came the choral composition that established his reputation: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Based on Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha, Samuel’s Hiawatha was an global success, especially with the Black community who felt indirect honor as white America assessed his work by the excellence of his art instead of the colour of his skin.

Activism and Politics

Recognition did not reduce Samuel’s politics. During that period, he was present at the First Pan African Conference in the UK where he made the acquaintance of the African American intellectual the renowned Du Bois and witnessed a range of talks, including on the mistreatment of Black South Africans. He was a campaigner until the end. He maintained ties with trailblazers for equality like this intellectual and this leader, gave addresses on ending discrimination, and even engaged in dialogue on matters of race with the American leader during an invitation to the presidential residence in 1904. Regarding his compositions, reminisced Du Bois, “he made his mark so prominently as a composer that it will endure.” He died in the early 20th century, aged 37. However, how would her father have reacted to his offspring’s move to travel to South Africa in the 1950s?

Conflict and Policy

“Offspring of Renowned Musician gives OK to S African Bias,” appeared as a heading in the Black American publication Jet magazine. Apartheid “struck me as the appropriate course”, Avril told Jet. Upon further questioning, she revised her statement: she didn’t agree with this policy “fundamentally” and it “ought to be permitted to work itself out, directed by good-intentioned people of diverse ethnicities”. Had Avril been more aligned to her father’s politics, or from Jim Crow America, she might have thought twice about this system. However, existence had protected her.

Heritage and Innocence

“I have a UK passport,” she stated, “and the authorities failed to question me about my background.” Therefore, with her “light” appearance (according to the magazine), she floated within European circles, lifted by their acclaim for her late father. She gave a talk about her father’s music at the Cape Town university and directed the national orchestra in the city, featuring the inspiring part of her Piano Concerto, titled: “In memory of my Father.” Although a accomplished player herself, she did not perform as the featured artist in her piece. On the contrary, she always led as the maestro; and so the segregated ensemble played under her baton.

The composer aspired, in her own words, she “might bring a change”. However, by that year, circumstances deteriorated. After authorities discovered her Black ancestry, she could no longer stay the nation. Her citizenship offered no defense, the diplomatic official recommended her departure or be jailed. She returned to England, embarrassed as the extent of her naivety dawned. “The realization was a painful one,” she lamented. Compounding her embarrassment was the printing that year of her ill-fated Jet interview, a year after her sudden departure from the country.

A Familiar Story

Upon contemplating with these legacies, I perceived a known narrative. The account of holding UK citizenship until it’s challenged – that brings to mind African-descended soldiers who defended the British during the World War II and lived only to be refused rightful benefits. And the Windrush generation,