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The composer Avril Coleridge-Taylor always bore the weight of her father’s reputation. Being the child of the celebrated composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, a leading the most famous English musicians of the turn of the 20th century, her reputation was enveloped in the deep shadows of history.

The First Recording

In recent months, I sat with these legacies as I made arrangements to make the inaugural album of the composer’s piano concerto from 1936. With its impassioned harmonies, heartfelt tunes, and bold rhythms, Avril’s work will provide new listeners valuable perspective into how she – a wartime composer who entered the world in 1903 – imagined her reality as a woman of colour.

Legacy and Reality

But here’s the thing about shadows. It requires time to adjust, to recognize outlines as they actually appear, to tell reality from distortion, and I had been afraid to face her history for some time.

I had so wanted the composer to be following in her father’s footsteps. In some ways, this was true. The idyllic English tones of her father’s impact can be observed in several pieces, including From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). Yet it suffices to review the headings of her family’s music to realize how he identified as not just a flag bearer of UK romantic tradition but a voice of the Black diaspora.

This was where Samuel and Avril appeared to part ways.

American society evaluated Samuel by the excellence of his compositions as opposed to the his ethnicity.

Family Background

As a student at the renowned institution, Samuel – the son of a parent from Sierra Leone and a Caucasian parent – started to lean into his background. At the time the poet of color the renowned Dunbar came to London in that era, the 21-year-old composer was keen to meet him. He composed the poet’s African Romances as a composition and the following year incorporated his poetry for an opera, Dream Lovers. Subsequently arrived the choral composition that made him famous: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Based on the poet Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha, this composition was an international hit, especially with the Black community who felt shared pride as white America judged Samuel by the excellence of his music as opposed to the his background.

Advocacy and Beliefs

Fame failed to diminish his activism. During that period, he attended the First Pan African Conference in the UK where he made the acquaintance of the African American intellectual the renowned Du Bois and saw a variety of discussions, covering the oppression of Black South Africans. He was an activist until the end. He kept connections with pioneers of civil rights including the scholar and Booker T Washington, gave addresses on ending discrimination, and even discussed matters of race with the US President on a trip to the US capital in 1904. As for his music, the scholar reflected, “he established his reputation so notably as a creative artist that it cannot soon be forgotten.” He succumbed in that year, in his thirties. But what would the composer have made of his daughter’s decision to work in this country in the mid-20th century?

Conflict and Policy

“Daughter of Famous Composer expresses approval to S African Bias,” declared a title in the Black American publication Jet magazine. Apartheid “struck me as the correct approach”, Avril told Jet. When asked to explain, she revised her statement: she didn’t agree with this policy “fundamentally” and it “should be allowed to run its course, directed by well-meaning South Africans of diverse ethnicities”. Had Avril been more aligned to her father’s politics, or raised in segregated America, she may have reconsidered about this system. However, existence had shielded her.

Identity and Naivety

“I possess a English document,” she said, “and the authorities failed to question me about my ethnicity.” So, with her “porcelain-white” skin (as described), she moved within European circles, supported by their acclaim for her renowned family member. She delivered a lecture about her family’s work at the Cape Town university and directed the national orchestra in Johannesburg, programming the inspiring part of her composition, titled: “Dedicated to my Father.” While a skilled pianist herself, she never played as the featured artist in her concerto. Instead, she consistently conducted as the maestro; and so the apartheid orchestra played under her baton.

The composer aspired, in her own words, she “might bring a change”. However, by that year, circumstances deteriorated. Once officials became aware of her mixed background, she was forced to leave the country. Her UK document failed to safeguard her, the British high commissioner urged her to go or risk imprisonment. She returned to England, deeply ashamed as the scale of her inexperience became clear. “The lesson was a difficult one,” she stated. Adding to her embarrassment was the printing that year of her unfortunate magazine feature, a year after her sudden departure from that nation.

A Familiar Story

As I sat with these memories, I felt a recurring theme. The narrative of holding UK citizenship until it’s revoked – one that calls to mind troops of color who served for the UK during the global conflict and lived only to be refused rightful benefits. Along with the Windrush era,