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Avril Coleridge-Taylor constantly bore the weight of her father’s heritage. Being the child of the renowned Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, among the most famous British artists of the 1900s, Avril’s reputation was enveloped in the long shadows of history.

The First Recording

In recent months, I contemplated these memories as I prepared to make the first-ever recording of the composer’s piano concerto from 1936. With its intense musical themes, expressive melodies, and confident beats, Avril’s work will offer audiences valuable perspective into how this artist – an artist in conflict born in 1903 – imagined her world as a woman of colour.

Shadows and Truth

However about shadows. It requires time to adapt, to recognize outlines as they really are, to tell reality from misrepresentation, and I was reluctant to face Avril’s past for a period.

I earnestly desired her to be her father’s daughter. Partially, she was. The rustic British sounds of her father’s impact can be heard in several pieces, such as From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). Yet it suffices to review the headings of her parent’s works to realize how he viewed himself as not only a flag bearer of UK romantic tradition and also a voice of the African diaspora.

At this point father and daughter appeared to part ways.

American society judged Samuel by the brilliance of his art as opposed to the his ethnicity.

Samuel’s African Roots

As a student at the renowned institution, the composer – the offspring of a African father and a Caucasian parent – started to lean into his background. At the time the African American poet the renowned Dunbar arrived in England in the late 19th century, the young musician eagerly sought him out. He set this literary work as a composition and the subsequent year incorporated his poetry for a musical work, Dream Lovers. This was followed by the choral composition that established his reputation: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Inspired by this American writer’s The Song of Hiawatha, the piece was an global success, notably for African Americans who felt indirect honor as American society judged Samuel by the quality of his compositions instead of the his background.

Advocacy and Beliefs

Success did not reduce Samuel’s politics. In 1900, he was present at the First Pan African Conference in the UK where he encountered the Black American thinker WEB Du Bois and saw a series of speeches, covering the subjugation of African people in South Africa. He was an activist until the end. He maintained ties with trailblazers for equality like this intellectual and this leader, delivered his own speeches on racial equality, and even discussed issues of racism with President Theodore Roosevelt on a trip to the White House in that year. Regarding his compositions, the scholar reflected, “he wrote his name so prominently as a creative artist that it will long be remembered.” He passed away in the early 20th century, in his thirties. But what would the composer have thought of his offspring’s move to be in the African nation in the mid-20th century?

Controversy and Apartheid

“Offspring of Renowned Musician shows support to apartheid system,” declared a title in the community journal Jet magazine. Apartheid “struck me as the correct approach”, she informed Jet. Upon further questioning, she qualified her remarks: she did not support with this policy “as a concept” and it “should be allowed to work itself out, guided by well-meaning South Africans of diverse ethnicities”. If Avril had been more in tune to her father’s politics, or born in Jim Crow America, she may have reconsidered about this system. But life had shielded her.

Background and Inexperience

“I have a UK passport,” she remarked, “and the authorities never asked me about my race.” So, with her “light” appearance (according to the magazine), she moved within European circles, supported by their praise for her late father. She delivered a lecture about her family’s work at the educational institution and directed the national orchestra in Johannesburg, programming the bold final section of her Piano Concerto, titled: “Dedicated to my Father.” Although a skilled pianist herself, she avoided playing as the soloist in her concerto. On the contrary, she invariably directed as the conductor; and so the orchestra of the era played under her baton.

Avril hoped, according to her, she “could introduce a change”. But by 1954, things fell apart. Once officials discovered her African heritage, she could no longer stay the land. Her UK document offered no defense, the British high commissioner advised her to leave or risk imprisonment. She returned to England, feeling great shame as the scale of her naivety became clear. “This experience was a hard one,” she expressed. Adding to her embarrassment was the 1955 publication of her ill-fated Jet interview, a year after her forced leaving from South Africa.

A Recurring Theme

While I reflected with these memories, I felt a known narrative. The narrative of identifying as British until you’re not – that brings to mind African-descended soldiers who fought on behalf of the English during the World War II and lived only to be refused rightful benefits. Including those from Windrush,