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Avril Coleridge-Taylor always bore the weight of her father’s legacy. As the offspring of the renowned Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, among the most famous English musicians of the 1900s, her identity was enveloped in the lingering obscurity of the past.

A World Premiere

Not long ago, I sat with these memories as I got ready to produce the inaugural album of Avril’s concerto for piano composed in 1936. With its intense musical themes, expressive melodies, and confident beats, Avril’s work will provide music lovers deep understanding into how this artist – a wartime composer originating from the early 1900s – conceived of her world as a female composer of color.

Past and Present

Yet about legacies. It requires time to adapt, to recognize outlines as they really are, to tell reality from distortion, and I felt hesitant to confront her history for some time.

I deeply hoped Avril to be following in her father’s footsteps. In some ways, this was true. The rustic British sounds of parental inspiration can be observed in several pieces, for example From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). But you only have to examine the headings of her father’s compositions to see how he heard himself as both a champion of English Romanticism as well as a voice of the Black diaspora.

It was here that Samuel and Avril began to differ.

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

Samuel’s African Roots

While he was studying at the prestigious music college, her father – the child of a parent from Sierra Leone and a white English mother – turned toward his African roots. When the Black American writer Paul Laurence Dunbar visited the UK in 1897, the young musician eagerly sought him out. He set Dunbar’s African Romances to music and the subsequent year used the poet’s words for a musical work, Dream Lovers. Subsequently arrived the choral piece that put Samuel on the map: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Based on the poet Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha, this composition was an international hit, particularly among Black Americans who felt vicarious pride as white America evaluated the composer by the excellence of his compositions rather than the his background.

Advocacy and Beliefs

Fame failed to diminish his beliefs. In 1900, he attended the First Pan African Conference in the UK where he encountered the Black American thinker WEB Du Bois and witnessed a series of speeches, such as the mistreatment of the Black community there. He remained an advocate until the end. He maintained ties with early civil rights leaders including the scholar and this leader, spoke publicly on equality for all, and even engaged in dialogue on matters of race with the American leader on a trip to the presidential residence in 1904. Regarding his compositions, the scholar reflected, “he wrote his name so prominently as a composer that it will long be remembered.” He succumbed in 1912, aged 37. However, how would the composer have reacted to his child’s choice to be in the African nation in the mid-20th century?

Conflict and Policy

“Offspring of Renowned Musician expresses approval to S African Bias,” declared a title in the community journal Jet magazine. Apartheid “appeared to me the correct approach”, Avril told Jet. When pushed to clarify, she qualified her remarks: she didn’t agree with the system “fundamentally” and it “ought to be permitted to work itself out, directed by well-meaning South Africans of every background”. Had Avril been more in tune to her family’s principles, or from the US under segregation, she could have hesitated about the policy. Yet her life had shielded her.

Heritage and Innocence

“I hold a English document,” she remarked, “and the officials did not inquire me about my race.” So, with her “porcelain-white” complexion (according to the magazine), she moved alongside white society, lifted by their praise for her renowned family member. She delivered a lecture about her parent’s compositions at the University of Cape Town and directed the broadcasting ensemble in that location, featuring the heroic third movement of her Piano Concerto, titled: “In remembrance of my Father.” While a confident pianist herself, she avoided playing as the featured artist in her concerto. Rather, she consistently conducted as the leader; and so the orchestra of the era played under her baton.

Avril hoped, according to her, she “might bring a change”. But by 1954, circumstances deteriorated. Once officials discovered her African heritage, she had to depart the nation. Her citizenship offered no defense, the UK representative urged her to go or be jailed. She came home, embarrassed as the magnitude of her naivety became clear. “The realization was a hard one,” she stated. Adding to her embarrassment was the printing that year of her ill-fated Jet interview, a year after her unceremonious exit from South Africa.

A Common Narrative

While I reflected with these memories, I perceived a known narrative. The account of being British until it’s challenged – one that calls to mind African-descended soldiers who fought on behalf of the British during the World War II and lived only to be not given their earned rewards. And the Windrush generation,