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This talented musician continually bore the weight of her father’s legacy. Being the child of the renowned Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, among the best-known British musicians of the 1900s, the composer’s identity was cloaked in the deep shadows of history.

The First Recording

In recent months, I sat with these shadows as I made arrangements to produce the inaugural album of the composer’s 1936 piano concerto. Featuring impassioned harmonies, heartfelt tunes, and valiant rhythms, this piece will provide audiences deep understanding into how the composer – an artist in conflict who entered the world in 1903 – conceived of her world as a woman of colour.

Shadows and Truth

Yet about legacies. One needs patience to adjust, to recognize outlines as they truly exist, to distinguish truth from misrepresentation, and I had been afraid to confront her history for a period.

I had so wanted her to be a reflection of her father. In some ways, that held. The pastoral English palettes of Samuel’s influence can be detected in many of her works, including From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). But you only have to review the names of her parent’s works to understand how he viewed himself as not only a champion of English Romanticism but a voice of the Black diaspora.

This was where father and daughter appeared to part ways.

The United States evaluated Samuel by the excellence of his art as opposed to the colour of his skin.

Parental Heritage

As a student at the Royal College of Music, the composer – the offspring of a African father and a white English mother – began embracing his African roots. At the time the African American poet this literary figure visited the UK in the late 19th century, the 21-year-old composer eagerly sought him out. He set the poet’s African Romances as a composition and the next year incorporated his poetry for a musical work, Dream Lovers. Then came the choral work that put Samuel on the map: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Inspired by the poet Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha, Samuel’s Hiawatha was an worldwide sensation, especially with Black Americans who felt indirect honor as the majority judged Samuel by the quality of his compositions instead of the his background.

Activism and Politics

Fame did not temper his activism. At the turn of the century, he participated in the First Pan African Conference in London where he made the acquaintance of the African American intellectual the renowned Du Bois and saw a series of speeches, covering the mistreatment of African people in South Africa. He was a campaigner throughout his life. He sustained relationships with pioneers of civil rights such as the scholar and this leader, delivered his own speeches on equality for all, and even talked about matters of race with the American leader during an invitation to the White House in the early 1900s. Regarding his compositions, Du Bois recalled, “he made his mark so prominently as a creative artist that it cannot soon be forgotten.” He succumbed in 1912, aged 37. But what would her father have thought of his daughter’s decision to work in this country in the mid-20th century?

Conflict and Policy

“Daughter of Famous Composer shows support to apartheid system,” appeared as a heading in the community journal Jet magazine. This policy “appeared to me the right policy”, she informed Jet. When pushed to clarify, she qualified her remarks: she didn’t agree with apartheid “fundamentally” and it “could be left to resolve itself, guided by benevolent South Africans of all races”. If Avril had been more attuned to her parent’s beliefs, or raised in Jim Crow America, she could have hesitated about the policy. But life had protected her.

Identity and Naivety

“I have a UK passport,” she said, “and the authorities never asked me about my ethnicity.” Therefore, with her “porcelain-white” complexion (according to the magazine), she floated alongside white society, supported by their acclaim for her deceased parent. She delivered a lecture about her family’s work at the educational institution and led the South African Broadcasting Corporation Orchestra in that location, programming the heroic third movement of her composition, titled: “In remembrance of my Father.” Even though a accomplished player on her own, she did not perform as the featured artist in her work. On the contrary, she always led as the maestro; and so the segregated ensemble performed under her direction.

The composer aspired, in her own words, she “might bring a transformation”. Yet in the mid-1950s, circumstances deteriorated. When government agents learned of her mixed background, she was forced to leave the land. Her UK document failed to safeguard her, the British high commissioner advised her to leave or be jailed. She returned to England, feeling great shame as the scale of her naivety was realized. “The lesson was a difficult one,” she stated. Adding to her humiliation was the release in 1955 of her unfortunate magazine feature, a year after her forced leaving from the country.

A Common Narrative

As I sat with these shadows, I felt a known narrative. The narrative of holding UK citizenship until you’re not – that brings to mind Black soldiers who served for the UK throughout the second world war and made it through but were refused rightful benefits. And the Windrush generation,