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This talented musician always experienced the weight of her family reputation. As the offspring of the renowned Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, one of the prominent British musicians of the 1900s, her reputation was enveloped in the long shadows of bygone eras.

A World Premiere

Earlier this year, I contemplated these shadows as I got ready to make the world premiere recording of her piano concerto from 1936. Featuring emotional harmonies, soulful lyricism, and bold rhythms, this piece will provide new listeners fascinating insight into how the composer – an artist in conflict who entered the world in 1903 – conceived of her world as a female composer of color.

Past and Present

But here’s the thing about shadows. It requires time to adjust, to recognize outlines as they truly exist, to tell reality from misrepresentation, and I was reluctant to address Avril’s past for some time.

I had so wanted Avril to be her father’s daughter. To some extent, she was. The pastoral English palettes of parental inspiration can be observed in several pieces, such as From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). However, one need only review the names of her parent’s works to understand how he heard himself as not just a flag bearer of UK romantic tradition but a advocate of the Black diaspora.

At this point parent and child seemed to diverge.

White America assessed the composer by the mastery of his music as opposed to the his racial background.

Samuel’s African Roots

As a student at the prestigious music college, her father – the child of a Sierra Leonean father and a white English mother – started to lean into his background. When the Black American writer Paul Laurence Dunbar came to London in that era, the 21-year-old composer eagerly sought him out. He composed the poet’s African Romances as a composition and the following year used the poet’s words for a stage piece, Dream Lovers. Subsequently arrived the choral work that put Samuel on the map: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Inspired by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha, the piece was an global success, particularly among Black Americans who felt shared pride as American society evaluated the composer by the brilliance of his compositions instead of the his race.

Activism and Politics

Success did not reduce Samuel’s politics. In 1900, he was present at the First Pan African Conference in London where he met the African American intellectual the renowned Du Bois and witnessed a range of talks, such as the oppression of Black South Africans. He was a campaigner to his final days. He kept connections with trailblazers for equality such as this intellectual and Booker T Washington, gave addresses on racial equality, and even discussed racial problems with the American leader during an invitation to the presidential residence in the early 1900s. Regarding his compositions, the scholar reflected, “he made his mark so notably as a creative artist that it will endure.” He died in that year, aged 37. But what would her father have reacted to his daughter’s decision to work in South Africa in the that decade?

Conflict and Policy

“Daughter of Famous Composer gives OK to South African policy,” appeared as a heading in the community journal Jet magazine. Apartheid “seems to me the right policy”, she informed Jet. Upon further questioning, she qualified her remarks: she was not in favor with apartheid “as a concept” and it “could be left to resolve itself, directed by well-meaning residents of diverse ethnicities”. Were the composer more in tune to her father’s politics, or from the US under segregation, she could have hesitated about apartheid. However, existence had protected her.

Identity and Naivety

“I have a English document,” she remarked, “and the officials never asked me about my race.” Therefore, with her “porcelain-white” skin (as described), she moved alongside white society, supported by their admiration for her deceased parent. She presented about her father’s music at the educational institution and directed the national orchestra in the city, programming the bold final section of her concerto, titled: “In memory of my Father.” While a skilled pianist herself, she never played as the featured artist in her work. Rather, she invariably directed as the leader; and so the apartheid orchestra played under her baton.

Avril hoped, as she stated, she “may foster a transformation”. But by 1954, the situation collapsed. When government agents became aware of her Black ancestry, she had to depart the land. Her UK document offered no defense, the UK representative recommended her departure or be jailed. She came home, embarrassed as the scale of her naivety became clear. “The realization was a painful one,” she expressed. Adding to her embarrassment was the 1955 publication of her controversial discussion, a year after her unceremonious exit from South Africa.

A Common Narrative

As I sat with these legacies, I sensed a familiar story. The narrative of being British until it’s revoked – that brings to mind Black soldiers who fought on behalf of the UK throughout the second world war and lived only to be not given their earned rewards. Along with the Windrush era,