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Avril Coleridge-Taylor continually bore the weight of her family reputation. Being the child of the celebrated composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, one of the most famous English musicians of the early 20th century, her identity was shrouded in the lingering obscurity of history.

An Inaugural Recording

Earlier this year, I contemplated these legacies as I prepared to record the world premiere recording of her piano concerto from 1936. With its impassioned harmonies, expressive melodies, and bold rhythms, her composition will offer audiences valuable perspective into how this artist – a wartime composer born in 1903 – imagined her existence as a female composer of color.

Shadows and Truth

However about the past. It requires time to adjust, to perceive forms as they truly exist, to separate fact from misinterpretation, and I had been afraid to address her history for a period.

I deeply hoped Avril to be following in her father’s footsteps. Partially, that held. The rustic British sounds of parental inspiration can be detected in several pieces, such as From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). However, one need only look at the headings of her father’s compositions to see how he identified as both a standard-bearer of UK romantic tradition as well as a advocate of the African heritage.

This was where parent and child began to differ.

The United States assessed the composer by the mastery of his art rather than the his ethnicity.

Samuel’s African Roots

During his studies at the Royal College of Music, the composer – the son of a Sierra Leonean father and a British mother – began embracing his background. Once the poet of color Paul Laurence Dunbar arrived in England in the late 19th century, the 21-year-old composer eagerly sought him out. He adapted the poet’s African Romances to music and the next year incorporated his poetry for a musical work, Dream Lovers. Subsequently arrived the choral composition that put Samuel on the map: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Inspired by the poet Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha, the piece was an global success, notably for African Americans who felt vicarious pride as American society assessed his work by the quality of his art rather than the colour of his skin.

Activism and Politics

Fame did not temper his activism. At the turn of the century, he was present at the First Pan African Conference in London where he encountered the prominent scholar WEB Du Bois and saw a variety of discussions, such as the mistreatment of Black South Africans. He was an activist to his final days. He maintained ties with pioneers of civil rights like the scholar and this leader, spoke publicly on racial equality, and even discussed matters of race with the US President on a trip to the US capital in the early 1900s. In terms of his art, reminisced Du Bois, “he made his mark so high as a musician that it will long be remembered.” He died in the early 20th century, aged 37. However, how would her father have reacted to his daughter’s decision to travel to the African nation in the that decade?

Controversy and Apartheid

“Child of Celebrated Artist shows support to S African Bias,” ran a headline in the African American magazine Jet magazine. Apartheid “appeared to me the appropriate course”, Avril told Jet. When asked to explain, she revised her statement: she did not support with the system “fundamentally” and it “could be left to resolve itself, guided by well-meaning residents of all races”. Had Avril been more aligned to her family’s principles, or from Jim Crow America, she may have reconsidered about this system. But life had protected her.

Background and Inexperience

“I hold a British passport,” she remarked, “and the government agents failed to question me about my ethnicity.” So, with her “porcelain-white” appearance (as Jet put it), she moved alongside white society, supported by their praise for her renowned family member. She delivered a lecture about her parent’s compositions at the Cape Town university and conducted the South African Broadcasting Corporation Orchestra in the city, programming the inspiring part of her composition, named: “Dedicated to my Father.” While a skilled pianist herself, she avoided playing as the soloist in her work. Instead, she invariably directed as the leader; and so the orchestra of the era played under her baton.

Avril hoped, as she stated, she “could introduce a change”. Yet in the mid-1950s, things fell apart. Once officials learned of her Black ancestry, she had to depart the nation. Her British passport didn’t protect her, the UK representative recommended her departure or be jailed. She went back to the UK, feeling great shame as the magnitude of her inexperience became clear. “This experience was a painful one,” she stated. Compounding her humiliation was the printing that year of her controversial discussion, a year after her forced leaving from that nation.

A Recurring Theme

Upon contemplating with these memories, I felt a known narrative. The story of holding UK citizenship until it’s revoked – one that calls to mind African-descended soldiers who served for the UK throughout the global conflict and survived only to be denied their due compensation. Including those from Windrush,