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The composer Avril Coleridge-Taylor continually experienced the burden of her father’s reputation. As the daughter of the celebrated composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, one of the best-known UK musicians of the turn of the 20th century, Avril’s name was shrouded in the deep shadows of the past.

An Inaugural Recording

Not long ago, I sat with these memories as I got ready to make the first-ever recording of her 1936 piano concerto. Featuring impassioned harmonies, heartfelt tunes, and confident beats, her composition will grant new listeners valuable perspective into how the composer – a wartime composer who entered the world in 1903 – imagined her world as a woman of colour.

Shadows and Truth

But here’s the thing about shadows. It can take a while to adjust, to see shapes as they truly exist, to tell reality from misinterpretation, and I had been afraid to face Avril’s past for a period.

I deeply hoped Avril to be following in her father’s footsteps. Partially, this was true. The pastoral English palettes of parental inspiration can be observed in many of her works, including From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). But you only have to examine the headings of her family’s music to understand how he identified as not just a champion of British Romantic style but a advocate of the African diaspora.

At this point father and daughter appeared to part ways.

The United States judged Samuel by the excellence of his art instead of the his racial background.

Family Background

As a student at the renowned institution, her father – the child of a Sierra Leonean father and a white English mother – turned toward his heritage. Once the Black American writer Paul Laurence Dunbar arrived in England in that era, the aspiring artist actively pursued him. He adapted this literary work to music and the subsequent year incorporated his poetry for a stage piece, Dream Lovers. This was followed by the choral composition that put Samuel on the map: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Drawing from the poet Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha, this composition was an global success, particularly among African Americans who felt vicarious pride as white America judged Samuel by the excellence of his music rather than the his race.

Advocacy and Beliefs

Fame failed to diminish his beliefs. At the turn of the century, he attended the First Pan African Conference in London where he made the acquaintance of the Black American thinker WEB Du Bois and saw a series of speeches, including on the mistreatment of the Black community there. He remained an advocate to his final days. He sustained relationships with trailblazers for equality such as Du Bois and Booker T Washington, delivered his own speeches on equality for all, and even engaged in dialogue on racial problems with President Theodore Roosevelt on a trip to the White House in the early 1900s. Regarding his compositions, Du Bois recalled, “he wrote his name so high as a musician that it will long be remembered.” He died in 1912, in his thirties. However, how would her father have reacted to his daughter’s decision to travel to this country in the mid-20th century?

Issues and Stance

“Offspring of Renowned Musician expresses approval to S African Bias,” appeared as a heading in the community journal Jet magazine. Apartheid “struck me as the right policy”, Avril told Jet. When pushed to clarify, she qualified her remarks: she did not support with the system “in principle” and it “could be left to resolve itself, guided by well-meaning residents of all races”. Had Avril been more attuned to her father’s politics, or raised in segregated America, she may have reconsidered about the policy. But life had shielded her.

Identity and Naivety

“I hold a UK passport,” she said, “and the officials failed to question me about my ethnicity.” Thus, with her “fair” complexion (as Jet put it), she moved alongside white society, supported by their praise for her late father. She presented about her parent’s compositions at the educational institution and conducted the broadcasting ensemble in that location, including the heroic third movement of her composition, named: “In memory of my Father.” Although a skilled pianist on her own, she did not perform as the lead performer in her work. Instead, she always led as the maestro; and so the apartheid orchestra performed under her direction.

She desired, in her own words, she “may foster a shift”. However, by that year, things fell apart. Once officials learned of her African heritage, she could no longer stay the land. Her UK document failed to safeguard her, the British high commissioner recommended her departure or be jailed. She came home, embarrassed as the extent of her inexperience dawned. “The realization was a hard one,” she expressed. Adding to her embarrassment was the printing that year of her controversial discussion, a year after her unceremonious exit from that nation.

A Common Narrative

Upon contemplating with these legacies, I felt a familiar story. The narrative of holding UK citizenship until you’re not – that brings to mind troops of color who defended the British throughout the second world war and survived only to be refused rightful benefits. Along with the Windrush era,