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The composer Avril Coleridge-Taylor constantly bore the pressure of her father’s heritage. As the daughter of the celebrated composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, a leading the most famous British musicians of the turn of the 20th century, her identity was shrouded in the lingering obscurity of bygone eras.

An Inaugural Recording

Earlier this year, I sat with these shadows as I got ready to produce the world premiere recording of the composer’s piano concerto from 1936. Boasting emotional harmonies, expressive melodies, and confident beats, her composition will provide audiences valuable perspective into how the composer – a composer during war born in 1903 – conceived of her existence as a female composer of color.

Past and Present

Yet about the past. It requires time to adjust, to see shapes as they really are, to distinguish truth from distortion, and I felt hesitant to face the composer’s background for some time.

I had so wanted the composer to be following in her father’s footsteps. To some extent, this was true. The rustic British sounds of Samuel’s influence can be heard in several pieces, for example From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). But you only have to review the titles of her parent’s works to understand how he identified as not just a standard-bearer of English Romanticism and also a voice of the African heritage.

This was where Samuel and Avril appeared to part ways.

White America judged Samuel by the mastery of his art rather than the his racial background.

Samuel’s African Roots

While he was studying at the prestigious music college, her father – the son of a Sierra Leonean father and a white English mother – turned toward his heritage. Once the Black American writer Paul Laurence Dunbar visited the UK in the late 19th century, the 21-year-old composer actively pursued him. He composed this literary work to music and the subsequent year incorporated his poetry for a musical work, Dream Lovers. Then came the choral composition that put Samuel on the map: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Inspired by this American writer’s The Song of Hiawatha, the piece was an international hit, especially with Black Americans who felt shared pride as American society evaluated the composer by the brilliance of his compositions rather than the his race.

Activism and Politics

Success failed to diminish Samuel’s politics. At the turn of the century, he participated in the pioneering African conference in London where he encountered the Black American thinker WEB Du Bois and observed a series of speeches, covering the subjugation of African people in South Africa. He was an activist throughout his life. He maintained ties with trailblazers for equality including this intellectual and Booker T Washington, gave addresses on ending discrimination, and even discussed issues of racism with the American leader during an invitation to the White House in 1904. As for his music, Du Bois recalled, “he made his mark so notably as a composer that it will long be remembered.” He succumbed in 1912, in his thirties. Yet how might her father have reacted to his offspring’s move to work in this country in the mid-20th century?

Controversy and Apartheid

“Child of Celebrated Artist gives OK to S African Bias,” appeared as a heading in the Black American publication Jet magazine. The system “struck me as the correct approach”, the composer stated Jet. When pushed to clarify, she backtracked: she was not in favor with this policy “as a concept” and it “should be allowed to work itself out, overseen by benevolent people of all races”. Had Avril been more aligned to her family’s principles, or raised in segregated America, she may have reconsidered about the policy. However, existence had shielded her.

Heritage and Innocence

“I have a English document,” she stated, “and the officials failed to question me about my background.” Thus, with her “fair” appearance (as Jet put it), she floated alongside white society, lifted by their admiration for her late father. She presented about her parent’s compositions at the Cape Town university and conducted the South African Broadcasting Corporation Orchestra in the city, featuring the bold final section of her Piano Concerto, titled: “In remembrance of my Father.” While a accomplished player on her own, she did not perform as the soloist in her work. On the contrary, she always led as the conductor; and so the orchestra of the era followed her lead.

Avril hoped, in her own words, she “might bring a shift”. But by 1954, things fell apart. Once officials discovered her Black ancestry, she was forced to leave the country. Her UK document didn’t protect her, the British high commissioner recommended her departure or be jailed. She went back to the UK, embarrassed as the extent of her innocence dawned. “This experience was a painful one,” she lamented. Increasing her disgrace was the 1955 publication of her controversial discussion, a year after her forced leaving from that nation.

A Familiar Story

While I reflected with these legacies, I perceived a known narrative. The narrative of being British until it’s revoked – that brings to mind African-descended soldiers who fought on behalf of the UK throughout the World War II and lived only to be denied their due compensation. And the Windrush generation,