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This talented musician continually experienced the weight of her father’s legacy. As the daughter of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, a leading the prominent English musicians of the 1900s, the composer’s reputation was shrouded in the long shadows of the past.

A World Premiere

Not long ago, I sat with these legacies as I made arrangements to produce the first-ever recording of the composer’s 1936 piano concerto. With its impassioned harmonies, soulful lyricism, and bold rhythms, this piece will grant audiences deep understanding into how she – an artist in conflict originating from the early 1900s – imagined her reality as a woman of colour.

Past and Present

Yet about the past. It can take a while to adjust, to perceive forms as they truly exist, to distinguish truth from misrepresentation, and I felt hesitant to face her history for some time.

I had so wanted her to be a reflection of her father. To some extent, she was. The pastoral English palettes of parental inspiration can be heard in many of her works, for example From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). Yet it suffices to look at the headings of her parent’s works to realize how he viewed himself as both a flag bearer of British Romantic style as well as a representative of the African diaspora.

At this point father and daughter began to differ.

American society assessed the composer by the mastery of his art as opposed to the his ethnicity.

Samuel’s African Roots

During his studies at the prestigious music college, the composer – the offspring of a African father and a Caucasian parent – started to lean into his heritage. At the time the Black American writer the renowned Dunbar arrived in England in the late 19th century, the 21-year-old composer was keen to meet him. He composed this literary work as a composition and the subsequent year incorporated his poetry for a stage piece, Dream Lovers. Then came the choral piece that established his reputation: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Inspired by this American writer’s The Song of Hiawatha, this composition was an global success, notably for the Black community who felt vicarious pride as white America assessed his work by the brilliance of his art instead of the colour of his skin.

Advocacy and Beliefs

Fame failed to diminish Samuel’s politics. During that period, he participated in the initial Pan African gathering in London where he met the prominent scholar the renowned Du Bois and witnessed a series of speeches, including on the mistreatment of the Black community there. He was an activist until the end. He sustained relationships with pioneers of civil rights including the scholar and this leader, delivered his own speeches on equality for all, and even discussed matters of race with President Theodore Roosevelt while visiting to the presidential residence in that year. As for his music, Du Bois recalled, “he wrote his name so prominently as a creative artist that it cannot soon be forgotten.” He passed away in 1912, aged 37. However, how would Samuel have made of his offspring’s move to be in South Africa in the that decade?

Issues and Stance

“Offspring of Renowned Musician shows support to South African policy,” ran a headline in the community journal Jet magazine. The system “struck me as the correct approach”, she informed Jet. When asked to explain, she qualified her remarks: she didn’t agree with apartheid “fundamentally” and it “ought to be permitted to resolve itself, guided by good-intentioned South Africans of diverse ethnicities”. If Avril had been more in tune to her parent’s beliefs, or born in segregated America, she may have reconsidered about apartheid. However, existence had protected her.

Identity and Naivety

“I have a UK passport,” she stated, “and the government agents never asked me about my race.” So, with her “porcelain-white” complexion (as described), she moved within European circles, lifted by their admiration for her deceased parent. She delivered a lecture about her parent’s compositions at the educational institution and conducted the South African Broadcasting Corporation Orchestra in the city, programming the heroic third movement of her concerto, subtitled: “In remembrance of my Father.” Even though a confident pianist personally, she did not perform as the soloist in her work. On the contrary, she invariably directed as the conductor; and so the segregated ensemble followed her lead.

She desired, in her own words, she “may foster a transformation”. Yet in the mid-1950s, the situation collapsed. Once officials became aware of her mixed background, she had to depart the land. Her UK document failed to safeguard her, the British high commissioner urged her to go or be jailed. She returned to England, feeling great shame as the magnitude of her inexperience dawned. “The lesson was a difficult one,” she lamented. Adding to her embarrassment was the printing that year of her ill-fated Jet interview, a year after her forced leaving from South Africa.

A Common Narrative

While I reflected with these legacies, I felt a known narrative. The story of identifying as British until it’s revoked – one that calls to mind African-descended soldiers who served for the English throughout the World War II and made it through but were denied their due compensation. Including those from Windrush,