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The composer Avril Coleridge-Taylor continually bore the burden of her father’s heritage. Being the child of the celebrated composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, among the best-known English composers of the early 20th century, Avril’s identity was shrouded in the long shadows of bygone eras.

The First Recording

Earlier this year, I contemplated these shadows as I prepared to make the world premiere recording of her piano concerto from 1936. Featuring intense musical themes, soulful lyricism, and bold rhythms, Avril’s work will provide new listeners deep understanding into how the composer – an artist in conflict born in 1903 – imagined her world as a woman of colour.

Shadows and Truth

But here’s the thing about the past. It requires time to adapt, to see shapes as they truly exist, to distinguish truth from misrepresentation, and I felt hesitant to face Avril’s past for some time.

I had so wanted Avril to be following in her father’s footsteps. In some ways, this was true. The idyllic English tones of parental inspiration can be detected in several pieces, including From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). But you only have to look at the headings of her father’s compositions to realize how he viewed himself as not just a flag bearer of British Romantic style and also a representative of the Black diaspora.

This was where Samuel and Avril seemed to diverge.

American society evaluated Samuel by the excellence of his music as opposed to the his ethnicity.

Family Background

As a student at the prestigious music college, Samuel – the son of a parent from Sierra Leone and a Caucasian parent – began embracing his African roots. When the Black American writer Paul Laurence Dunbar came to London in that era, the young musician was keen to meet him. He adapted the poet’s African Romances to music and the following year incorporated his poetry for an opera, Dream Lovers. Subsequently arrived the choral work that put Samuel on the map: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Drawing from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha, this composition was an international hit, especially with Black Americans who felt shared pride as the majority evaluated the composer by the quality of his art as opposed to the colour of his skin.

Activism and Politics

Fame did not reduce his beliefs. During that period, he attended the First Pan African Conference in the UK where he made the acquaintance of the Black American thinker WEB Du Bois and witnessed a variety of discussions, covering the oppression of the Black community there. He was an activist until the end. He sustained relationships with early civil rights leaders such as this intellectual and Booker T Washington, gave addresses on equality for all, and even talked about issues of racism with the US President on a trip to the presidential residence in the early 1900s. As for his music, reminisced Du Bois, “he wrote his name so notably as a creative artist that it will long be remembered.” He died in the early 20th century, at 37 years old. Yet how might Samuel have reacted to his child’s choice to travel to this country in the that decade?

Controversy and Apartheid

“Offspring of Renowned Musician gives OK to South African policy,” ran a headline in the Black American publication Jet magazine. Apartheid “seems to me the appropriate course”, the composer stated Jet. When pushed to clarify, she backtracked: she didn’t agree with the system “as a concept” and it “ought to be permitted to work itself out, overseen by well-meaning people of every background”. If Avril had been 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 protected her.

Identity and Naivety

“I have a British passport,” she remarked, “and the government agents failed to question me about my race.” Thus, with her “light” skin (according to the magazine), she floated among the Europeans, lifted by their acclaim for her deceased parent. She presented about her parent’s compositions at the University of Cape Town and directed the broadcasting ensemble in the city, including the bold final section of her composition, titled: “In remembrance of my Father.” While a skilled pianist on her own, she did not perform as the soloist in her piece. On the contrary, she invariably directed as the maestro; and so the apartheid orchestra followed her lead.

The composer aspired, according to her, she “could introduce a shift”. However, by that year, things fell apart. Once officials became aware of her African heritage, she could no longer stay the nation. Her British passport didn’t protect her, the diplomatic official urged her to go or be jailed. She came home, deeply ashamed as the magnitude of her naivety became clear. “The lesson was a difficult one,” she expressed. Adding to her embarrassment was the printing that year of her unfortunate magazine feature, a year after her unceremonious exit from the country.

A Common Narrative

Upon contemplating with these legacies, I perceived a known narrative. The narrative of identifying as British until you’re not – that brings to mind Black soldiers who served for the UK throughout the global conflict and lived only to be refused rightful benefits. And the Windrush generation,