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Avril Coleridge-Taylor constantly experienced the burden of her family heritage. As the daughter of the celebrated composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, a leading the most famous British artists of the 1900s, Avril’s identity was enveloped in the deep shadows of history.

An Inaugural Recording

Earlier this year, I contemplated these memories as I got ready to make the inaugural album of Avril’s piano concerto from 1936. Featuring intense musical themes, expressive melodies, and confident beats, this piece will offer new listeners deep understanding into how this artist – an artist in conflict who entered the world in 1903 – imagined her reality as a artist with mixed heritage.

Past and Present

But here’s the thing about shadows. It can take a while to acclimate, to recognize outlines as they really are, to distinguish truth from distortion, and I had been afraid to address the composer’s background for a while.

I deeply hoped the composer to be following in her father’s footsteps. Partially, that held. The rustic British sounds of parental inspiration can be observed in many of her works, such as From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). However, one need only look at the names of her family’s music to understand how he identified as both a standard-bearer of UK romantic tradition as well as a voice of the African heritage.

It was here that parent and child appeared to part ways.

The United States evaluated Samuel by the mastery of his music rather than the colour of his skin.

Parental Heritage

During his studies at the renowned institution, Samuel – the son of a African father and a white English mother – turned toward his background. Once the Black American writer the renowned Dunbar visited the UK in the late 19th century, the young musician eagerly sought him out. He composed this literary work to music and the following year used the poet’s words for an opera, Dream Lovers. Subsequently arrived the choral work that made him famous: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Based on the poet Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha, the piece was an worldwide sensation, especially with African Americans who felt shared pride as the majority assessed his work by the quality of his art instead of the his background.

Advocacy and Beliefs

Success did not reduce Samuel’s politics. At the turn of the century, he attended the First Pan African Conference in London where he encountered the prominent scholar this influential figure and observed a series of speeches, including on the oppression of the Black community there. He was a campaigner to his final days. He sustained relationships with early civil rights leaders such as the scholar and this leader, delivered his own speeches on racial equality, and even talked about racial problems with the US President during an invitation to the White House in 1904. As for his music, reminisced Du Bois, “he made his mark so prominently as a composer that it cannot soon be forgotten.” He died in 1912, in his thirties. However, how would the composer have made of his offspring’s move to work in the African nation in the 1950s?

Issues and Stance

“Child of Celebrated Artist gives OK to apartheid system,” ran a headline in the community journal Jet magazine. Apartheid “struck me as the appropriate course”, the composer stated Jet. When pushed to clarify, she revised her statement: she didn’t agree with apartheid “as a concept” and it “ought to be permitted to run its course, overseen by well-meaning South Africans of all races”. Were the composer more aligned to her parent’s beliefs, or raised in Jim Crow America, she could have hesitated about apartheid. Yet her life had shielded her.

Background and Inexperience

“I hold a English document,” she said, “and the authorities failed to question me about my background.” Therefore, with her “fair” complexion (according to the magazine), she moved alongside white society, supported by their praise for her late father. She gave a talk about her father’s music at the University of Cape Town and conducted the national orchestra in Johannesburg, featuring the heroic third movement of her composition, named: “Dedicated to my Father.” While a confident pianist on her own, she never played as the featured artist in her piece. Rather, she invariably directed as the conductor; and so the apartheid orchestra followed her lead.

The composer aspired, in her own words, she “may foster a transformation”. Yet in the mid-1950s, things fell apart. After authorities learned of her African heritage, she had to depart the land. Her citizenship failed to safeguard her, the diplomatic official urged her to go or be jailed. She returned to England, feeling great shame as the extent of her inexperience became clear. “This experience was a painful one,” she lamented. Compounding her disgrace was the 1955 publication of her ill-fated Jet interview, a year after her forced leaving from the country.

A Common Narrative

Upon contemplating with these legacies, I perceived a known narrative. The account of being British until it’s revoked – which recalls Black soldiers who defended the UK in the second world war and made it through but were denied their due compensation. Along with the Windrush era,