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Avril Coleridge-Taylor constantly experienced the pressure of her father’s heritage. As the offspring of the celebrated composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, among the best-known English musicians of the turn of the 20th century, Avril’s reputation was enveloped in the deep shadows of the past.

An Inaugural Recording

In recent months, I sat with these shadows as I got ready to record the first-ever recording of her piano concerto from 1936. Featuring intense musical themes, heartfelt tunes, and bold rhythms, Avril’s work will grant audiences deep understanding into how she – a wartime composer originating from the early 1900s – imagined her reality as a female composer of color.

Shadows and Truth

But here’s the thing about the past. It can take a while to acclimate, to recognize outlines as they really are, to distinguish truth from distortion, and I had been afraid to confront Avril’s past for some time.

I earnestly desired Avril to be her father’s daughter. Partially, she was. The rustic British sounds of her father’s impact can be heard in many of her works, including From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). Yet it suffices to review the headings of her parent’s works to understand how he heard himself as both a standard-bearer of English Romanticism but a voice of the African diaspora.

At this point Samuel and Avril seemed to diverge.

American society judged Samuel by the brilliance of his art instead of the colour of his skin.

Parental Heritage

While he was studying at the Royal College of Music, the composer – the offspring of a African father and a white English mother – started to lean into his background. At the time the African American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar came to London in 1897, the aspiring artist was keen to meet him. He composed the poet’s African Romances into music and the next year adapted his verses for a musical work, Dream Lovers. Subsequently arrived the choral piece that made him famous: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Inspired by the poet Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha, this composition was an international hit, particularly among African Americans who felt indirect honor as American society judged Samuel by the brilliance of his music rather than the his race.

Advocacy and Beliefs

Recognition failed to diminish Samuel’s politics. During that period, he attended the First Pan African Conference in London where he encountered the African American intellectual the renowned Du Bois and saw a range of talks, such as the subjugation of the Black community there. He was an activist until the end. He kept connections with early civil rights leaders including this intellectual and Booker T Washington, delivered his own speeches on ending discrimination, and even engaged in dialogue on issues of racism with President Theodore Roosevelt during an invitation to the US capital in the early 1900s. As for his music, the scholar reflected, “he established his reputation so prominently as a musician that it will long be remembered.” He passed away in 1912, at 37 years old. However, how would the composer have reacted to his offspring’s move to work in the African nation in the mid-20th century?

Issues and Stance

“Child of Celebrated Artist gives OK to apartheid system,” declared a title in the community journal Jet magazine. This policy “seems to me the correct approach”, the composer stated Jet. When asked to explain, she backtracked: she didn’t agree with apartheid “in principle” and it “should be allowed to work itself out, guided by good-intentioned people of all races”. Had Avril been more aligned to her parent’s beliefs, or from the US under segregation, she might have thought twice about apartheid. However, existence had sheltered her.

Heritage and Innocence

“I have a UK passport,” she remarked, “and the government agents failed to question me about my race.” Therefore, with her “fair” skin (according to the magazine), she floated within European circles, lifted by their admiration for her late father. She presented about her father’s music at the Cape Town university and directed the national orchestra in Johannesburg, programming the inspiring part of her Piano Concerto, named: “In remembrance of my Father.” While a confident pianist personally, she did not perform as the lead performer in her concerto. Instead, she invariably directed as the maestro; and so the orchestra of the era performed under her direction.

She desired, according to her, she “could introduce a transformation”. However, by that year, things fell apart. When government agents became aware of her African heritage, she had to depart the nation. Her citizenship didn’t protect her, the diplomatic official recommended her departure or risk imprisonment. She went back to the UK, deeply ashamed as the extent of her inexperience dawned. “The realization was a hard one,” she expressed. Adding to her embarrassment was the printing that year of her controversial discussion, a year after her unceremonious exit from the country.

A Familiar Story

As I sat with these legacies, I felt a familiar story. The account of identifying as British until it’s challenged – one that calls to mind troops of color who fought on behalf of the English in the World War II and lived only to be not given their earned rewards. And the Windrush generation,