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The composer Avril Coleridge-Taylor continually experienced the weight of her parent’s reputation. As the offspring of the celebrated composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, one of the prominent British artists of the turn of the 20th century, the composer’s identity was enveloped in the lingering obscurity of bygone eras.

A World Premiere

Not long ago, I contemplated these shadows as I got ready to make the inaugural album of the composer’s piano concerto from 1936. Boasting impassioned harmonies, soulful lyricism, and bold rhythms, Avril’s work will grant music lovers fascinating insight into how she – a wartime composer originating from the early 1900s – conceived of her existence as a woman of colour.

Shadows and Truth

But here’s the thing about the past. It requires time to acclimate, to perceive forms as they truly exist, to distinguish truth from distortion, and I was reluctant to address Avril’s past for some time.

I had so wanted Avril to be following in her father’s footsteps. Partially, this was true. The idyllic English tones of Samuel’s influence can be observed in many of her works, including From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). Yet it suffices to examine the names of her parent’s works to understand how he heard himself as not only a standard-bearer of British Romantic style and also a advocate of the Black diaspora.

It was here that Samuel and Avril seemed to diverge.

The United States assessed the composer by the brilliance of his music instead of the his ethnicity.

Family Background

As a student at the Royal College of Music, Samuel – the son of a Sierra Leonean father and a Caucasian parent – started to lean into his African roots. When the African American poet this literary figure arrived in England in 1897, the young musician was keen to meet him. He set the poet’s African Romances to music and the following year used the poet’s words for a musical work, Dream Lovers. Then came the choral piece that made him famous: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Based on this American writer’s The Song of Hiawatha, the piece was an international hit, notably for the Black community who felt vicarious pride as white America assessed his work by the quality of his compositions as opposed to the colour of his skin.

Advocacy and Beliefs

Recognition did not temper Samuel’s politics. During that period, he was present at the initial Pan African gathering in London where he made the acquaintance of the Black American thinker WEB Du Bois and witnessed a range of talks, including on the subjugation of the Black community there. He was a campaigner to his final days. He sustained relationships with trailblazers for equality including Du Bois and Booker T Washington, delivered his own speeches on equality for all, and even engaged in dialogue on matters of race with the US President on a trip to the White House in that year. Regarding his compositions, the scholar reflected, “he established his reputation so notably as a musician that it cannot soon be forgotten.” He died in 1912, aged 37. Yet how might the composer have made of his daughter’s decision to travel to South Africa in the that decade?

Controversy and Apartheid

“Offspring of Renowned Musician expresses approval to South African policy,” declared a title in the African American magazine Jet magazine. Apartheid “struck me as the right policy”, Avril told Jet. When pushed to clarify, she revised her statement: she was not in favor with the system “as a concept” and it “ought to be permitted to run its course, directed by good-intentioned South Africans of every background”. Were the composer more aligned to her parent’s beliefs, or raised in Jim Crow America, she could have hesitated about the policy. However, existence had protected her.

Identity and Naivety

“I have a English document,” she said, “and the authorities did not inquire me about my race.” Therefore, with her “light” appearance (according to the magazine), she floated alongside white society, lifted by their acclaim for her late father. She delivered a lecture about her parent’s compositions at the University of Cape Town and directed the broadcasting ensemble in the city, programming the bold final section of her concerto, named: “In memory of my Father.” While a confident pianist personally, she never played as the featured artist in her concerto. Instead, she invariably directed as the conductor; and so the orchestra of the era played under her baton.

The composer aspired, in her own words, she “might bring a transformation”. However, by that year, the situation collapsed. When government agents learned of her Black ancestry, she could no longer stay the land. Her British passport failed to safeguard her, the diplomatic official advised her to leave or be jailed. She went back to the UK, embarrassed as the scale of her naivety was realized. “This experience was a difficult one,” she lamented. Compounding her disgrace was the printing that year of her controversial discussion, a year after her forced leaving from South Africa.

A Recurring Theme

While I reflected with these legacies, I felt a recurring theme. The account of holding UK citizenship until it’s revoked – which recalls troops of color who served for the British during the global conflict and lived only to be not given their earned rewards. And the Windrush generation,