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This talented musician always bore the burden of her father’s reputation. As the daughter of the celebrated composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, among the best-known British artists of the turn of the 20th century, the composer’s reputation was shrouded in the lingering obscurity of history.

A World Premiere

In recent months, I contemplated these shadows as I made arrangements to produce the world premiere recording of the composer’s concerto for piano composed in 1936. Boasting intense musical themes, soulful lyricism, and confident beats, Avril’s work will provide new listeners fascinating insight into how the composer – an artist in conflict born in 1903 – imagined her reality as a woman of colour.

Shadows and Truth

But here’s the thing about shadows. It can take a while to acclimate, to perceive forms as they actually appear, to tell reality from distortion, and I was reluctant to face the composer’s background for some time.

I had so wanted the composer to be a reflection of her father. Partially, this was true. The pastoral English palettes of parental inspiration can be observed in numerous compositions, including From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). But you only have to examine the headings of her parent’s works to see how he viewed himself as not just a flag bearer of British Romantic style but a voice of the Black diaspora.

It was here that father and daughter began to differ.

White America judged Samuel by the excellence of his compositions as opposed to the colour of his skin.

Family Background

As a student at the prestigious music college, her father – the offspring of a African father and a Caucasian parent – began embracing his heritage. When the Black American writer the renowned Dunbar came to London in the late 19th century, the young musician actively pursued him. He adapted this literary work as a composition and the following year adapted his verses for a musical work, Dream Lovers. This was followed by the choral work that made him famous: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Based on Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha, this composition was an international hit, especially with African Americans who felt indirect honor as the majority assessed his work by the brilliance of his art rather than the his race.

Activism and Politics

Recognition failed to diminish his beliefs. At the turn of the century, he participated in the First Pan African Conference in England where he met the Black American thinker this influential figure and saw a series of speeches, covering the mistreatment of African people in South Africa. He was an activist to his final days. He maintained ties with pioneers of civil rights such as Du Bois and this leader, gave addresses on racial equality, and even discussed racial problems with the US President while visiting to the US capital in that year. Regarding his compositions, Du Bois recalled, “he wrote his name so prominently as a composer that it will endure.” He succumbed in the early 20th century, aged 37. However, how would the composer have reacted to his child’s choice to be in South Africa in the 1950s?

Conflict and Policy

“Daughter of Famous Composer shows support to S African Bias,” declared a title in the community journal Jet magazine. This policy “appeared to me the right policy”, Avril told Jet. When pushed to clarify, she revised her statement: she was not in favor with this policy “as a concept” and it “ought to be permitted to run its course, directed by well-meaning people of all races”. If Avril had been more in tune to her family’s principles, or raised in the US under segregation, she might have thought twice about the policy. But life had shielded her.

Background and Inexperience

“I possess a English document,” she stated, “and the authorities did not inquire me about my ethnicity.” Therefore, with her “light” complexion (as Jet put it), she moved within European circles, lifted by their admiration for her renowned family member. She delivered a lecture about her parent’s compositions at the educational institution and directed the national orchestra in Johannesburg, programming the heroic third movement of her Piano Concerto, titled: “Dedicated to my Father.” While a confident pianist on her own, she did not perform as the soloist in her concerto. On the contrary, she invariably directed as the maestro; and so the orchestra of the era followed her lead.

The composer aspired, according to her, she “might bring a shift”. But by 1954, things fell apart. When government agents learned of her African heritage, she had to depart the land. Her British passport offered no defense, the diplomatic official recommended her departure or risk imprisonment. She came home, feeling great shame as the extent of her inexperience dawned. “The realization was a hard one,” she stated. Increasing her humiliation was the printing that year of her controversial discussion, a year after her sudden departure from that nation.

A Familiar Story

While I reflected with these shadows, I sensed a recurring theme. The account of being British until you’re not – which recalls African-descended soldiers who defended the UK during the World War II and lived only to be denied their due compensation. Along with the Windrush era,