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This talented musician always bore the pressure of her father’s heritage. As the offspring of the celebrated composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, one of the prominent English composers of the 1900s, her name was enveloped in the lingering obscurity of history.

An Inaugural Recording

Not long ago, I contemplated these legacies as I made arrangements to make the inaugural album of Avril’s concerto for piano composed in 1936. Featuring intense musical themes, expressive melodies, and confident beats, this piece will grant music lovers deep understanding into how she – a wartime composer born in 1903 – conceived of her existence as a artist with mixed heritage.

Past and Present

Yet about the past. It requires time to adapt, to perceive forms as they actually appear, to distinguish truth from misinterpretation, and I felt hesitant to face her history for some time.

I deeply hoped her to be her father’s daughter. In some ways, she was. The pastoral English palettes of her father’s impact can be heard in numerous compositions, such as From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). Yet it suffices to look at the headings of her father’s compositions to see how he identified as both a standard-bearer of English Romanticism and also a representative of the African heritage.

At this point parent and child seemed to diverge.

White America judged Samuel by the mastery of his music instead of the his ethnicity.

Family Background

During his studies at the prestigious music college, Samuel – the child of a Sierra Leonean father and a British mother – turned toward his heritage. Once the poet of color Paul Laurence Dunbar came to London in the late 19th century, the aspiring artist was keen to meet him. He composed the poet’s African Romances to music and the next year incorporated his poetry for a musical work, Dream Lovers. Then came the choral composition that established his reputation: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Drawing from the poet Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha, this composition was an international hit, especially with Black Americans who felt indirect honor as American society evaluated the composer by the excellence of his music as opposed to the his background.

Activism and Politics

Success failed to diminish his activism. During that period, he participated in the First Pan African Conference in the UK where he made the acquaintance of the Black American thinker WEB Du Bois and saw a variety of discussions, covering the mistreatment of African people in South Africa. He was an activist to his final days. He kept connections with pioneers of civil rights including the scholar and this leader, gave addresses on ending discrimination, and even discussed issues of racism with the US President while visiting to the White House in that year. In terms of his art, Du Bois recalled, “he made his mark so high as a composer that it cannot soon be forgotten.” He died in that year, at 37 years old. But what would the composer have made of his child’s choice to travel to South Africa in the 1950s?

Conflict and Policy

“Daughter of Famous Composer expresses approval to apartheid system,” appeared as a heading in the Black American publication Jet magazine. Apartheid “seems to me the appropriate course”, Avril told Jet. When pushed to clarify, she qualified her remarks: she did not support with apartheid “as a concept” and it “should be allowed to resolve itself, overseen by well-meaning people of diverse ethnicities”. Were the composer more in tune to her parent’s beliefs, or raised in the US under segregation, she could have hesitated about the policy. But life had shielded her.

Identity and Naivety

“I have a UK passport,” she stated, “and the authorities never asked me about my race.” Thus, with her “fair” skin (as Jet put it), she floated within European circles, buoyed up by their acclaim for her renowned family member. She delivered a lecture about her father’s music at the educational institution and led the South African Broadcasting Corporation Orchestra in that location, including the bold final section of her composition, titled: “In remembrance of my Father.” Even though a confident pianist on her own, she avoided playing as the featured artist in her piece. Instead, she consistently conducted as the leader; and so the orchestra of the era performed under her direction.

Avril hoped, in her own words, she “could introduce a transformation”. But by 1954, the situation collapsed. Once officials discovered her Black ancestry, she had to depart the nation. Her citizenship offered no defense, the UK representative advised her to leave or be jailed. She came home, feeling great shame as the scale of her naivety became clear. “The lesson was a painful one,” she lamented. Increasing her embarrassment was the printing that year of her ill-fated Jet interview, a year after her sudden departure from the country.

A Recurring Theme

While I reflected with these shadows, I felt a familiar story. The narrative of holding UK citizenship until it’s challenged – that brings to mind Black soldiers who defended the UK during the second world war and lived only to be denied their due compensation. Along with the Windrush era,