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The composer Avril Coleridge-Taylor constantly felt the burden of her parent’s legacy. Being the child of the celebrated composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, a leading the most famous UK artists of the turn of the 20th century, Avril’s reputation was shrouded in the long shadows of the past.

A World Premiere

Earlier this year, I contemplated these legacies as I made arrangements to produce the inaugural album of her concerto for piano composed in 1936. Boasting intense musical themes, soulful lyricism, and confident beats, this piece will grant music lovers fascinating insight into how the composer – a wartime composer originating from the early 1900s – imagined her existence as a female composer of color.

Legacy and Reality

However about the past. It can take a while to acclimate, to see shapes as they really are, to separate fact from misinterpretation, and I felt hesitant to confront her history for a period.

I deeply hoped Avril to be following in her father’s footsteps. To some extent, this was true. The idyllic English tones of her father’s impact can be observed in many of her works, including From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). Yet it suffices to review the names of her parent’s works to realize how he heard himself as not just a flag bearer of British Romantic style and also a advocate of the African heritage.

This was where Samuel and Avril began to differ.

The United States assessed the composer by the brilliance of his art instead of the colour of his skin.

Samuel’s African Roots

While he was studying at the Royal College of Music, her father – the child of a parent from Sierra Leone and a Caucasian parent – started to lean into his background. Once the poet of color Paul Laurence Dunbar came to London in 1897, the 21-year-old composer eagerly sought him out. He adapted the poet’s African Romances as a composition and the following year incorporated his poetry for a stage piece, Dream Lovers. This was followed by the choral composition that established his reputation: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Inspired by this American writer’s The Song of Hiawatha, Samuel’s Hiawatha was an international hit, particularly among the Black community who felt shared pride as white America judged Samuel by the brilliance of his art rather than the his race.

Activism and Politics

Fame did not reduce his activism. At the turn of the century, he attended the First Pan African Conference in the UK where he made the acquaintance of the African American intellectual WEB Du Bois and saw a variety of discussions, such as the oppression of African people in South Africa. He was a campaigner until the end. He kept connections with pioneers of civil rights such as Du Bois and the educator Washington, spoke publicly on equality for all, and even discussed matters of race with the American leader while visiting to the White House in 1904. Regarding his compositions, reminisced Du Bois, “he made his mark so notably as a creative artist that it cannot soon be forgotten.” He passed away in the early 20th century, at 37 years old. Yet how might her father have made of his daughter’s decision to travel to the African nation in the that decade?

Controversy and Apartheid

“Offspring of Renowned Musician expresses approval to S African Bias,” declared a title in the African American magazine Jet magazine. The system “seems to me the correct approach”, the composer stated Jet. When asked to explain, she revised her statement: she didn’t agree with apartheid “as a concept” and it “should be allowed to run its course, guided by good-intentioned people of every background”. Were the composer more attuned to her family’s principles, or born in Jim Crow America, she may have reconsidered about this system. But life had protected her.

Heritage and Innocence

“I have a UK passport,” she said, “and the government agents did not inquire me about my background.” Therefore, with her “light” complexion (as described), she traveled among the Europeans, buoyed up by their praise for her late father. She gave a talk about her family’s work at the Cape Town university and conducted the South African Broadcasting Corporation Orchestra in the city, including the heroic third movement of her composition, subtitled: “In remembrance of my Father.” Even though a skilled pianist personally, she avoided playing as the featured artist in her concerto. Rather, she consistently conducted as the conductor; and so the apartheid orchestra performed under her direction.

She desired, in her own words, she “might bring a change”. However, by that year, circumstances deteriorated. After authorities learned of her Black ancestry, she had to depart the nation. Her UK document offered no defense, the British high commissioner urged her to go or be jailed. She returned to England, embarrassed as the magnitude of her inexperience was realized. “This experience was a painful one,” she stated. Compounding her embarrassment was the printing that year of her ill-fated Jet interview, a year after her sudden departure from South Africa.

A Recurring Theme

While I reflected with these legacies, I perceived a familiar story. The account of identifying as British until you’re not – one that calls to mind troops of color who fought on behalf of the UK in the global conflict and lived only to be refused rightful benefits. Along with the Windrush era,