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This talented musician constantly felt the burden of her parent’s legacy. As the offspring of the renowned Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, one of the most famous UK musicians of the 1900s, Avril’s identity was shrouded in the lingering obscurity of history.

A World Premiere

In recent months, I reflected on these memories as I made arrangements to produce the world premiere recording of Avril’s concerto for piano composed in 1936. Boasting impassioned harmonies, soulful lyricism, and bold rhythms, her composition will provide music lovers fascinating insight into how she – a wartime composer originating from the early 1900s – imagined her existence as a artist with mixed heritage.

Shadows and Truth

However about legacies. One needs patience to adjust, to recognize outlines as they really are, to tell reality from distortion, and I was reluctant to face her history for some time.

I deeply hoped Avril to be her father’s daughter. Partially, this was true. The rustic British sounds of Samuel’s influence can be detected in several pieces, for example From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). Yet it suffices to examine the names of her father’s compositions to realize how he identified as not only a champion of British Romantic style but a voice of the Black diaspora.

It was here that father and daughter appeared to part ways.

American society judged Samuel by the mastery of his compositions rather than the his racial background.

Family Background

While he was studying at the Royal College of Music, her father – the offspring of a parent from Sierra Leone and a white English mother – began embracing his heritage. Once the Black American writer Paul Laurence Dunbar came to London in the late 19th century, the aspiring artist actively pursued him. He composed this literary work as a composition and the next year used the poet’s words for an opera, Dream Lovers. Subsequently arrived the choral piece that established his reputation: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Based on Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha, Samuel’s Hiawatha was an worldwide sensation, particularly among the Black community who felt indirect honor as American society judged Samuel by the excellence of his music instead of the colour of his skin.

Advocacy and Beliefs

Success did not reduce his activism. During that period, he was present at the First Pan African Conference in England where he made the acquaintance of the prominent scholar the renowned Du Bois and saw a variety of discussions, including on the mistreatment of the Black community there. He remained an advocate until the end. He kept connections with early civil rights leaders including Du Bois and this leader, delivered his own speeches on racial equality, and even talked about issues of racism with President Theodore Roosevelt while visiting to the US capital in that year. As for his music, Du Bois recalled, “he wrote his name so notably as a creative artist that it will long be remembered.” He succumbed in 1912, in his thirties. Yet how might her father have reacted to his child’s choice to work in the African nation in the mid-20th century?

Conflict and Policy

“Child of Celebrated Artist shows support to apartheid system,” declared a title in the African American magazine Jet magazine. This policy “appeared to me the right policy”, she informed Jet. When pushed to clarify, she backtracked: she didn’t agree with apartheid “fundamentally” and it “could be left to work itself out, overseen by benevolent South Africans of diverse ethnicities”. Were the composer more in tune to her father’s politics, or born in segregated America, she may have reconsidered about apartheid. Yet her life had sheltered her.

Background and Inexperience

“I have a UK passport,” she remarked, “and the authorities never asked me about my race.” Therefore, with her “fair” complexion (as described), she floated among the Europeans, 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 broadcasting ensemble in Johannesburg, including the bold final section of her concerto, titled: “In remembrance of my Father.” Even though a skilled pianist herself, she never played as the lead performer in her piece. Rather, she invariably directed as the maestro; and so the apartheid orchestra played under her baton.

Avril hoped, in her own words, she “might bring a shift”. But by 1954, circumstances deteriorated. When government agents became aware of her African heritage, she was forced to leave the land. Her citizenship offered no defense, the diplomatic official advised her to leave or risk imprisonment. She went back to the UK, embarrassed as the scale of her innocence dawned. “This experience was a hard one,” she lamented. Adding to her disgrace was the 1955 publication of her controversial discussion, a year after her sudden departure from the country.

A Common Narrative

Upon contemplating with these legacies, I perceived a familiar story. The story of being British until you’re not – which recalls African-descended soldiers who defended the English throughout the World War II and survived only to be denied their due compensation. And the Windrush generation,