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The composer Avril Coleridge-Taylor constantly felt the pressure of her father’s legacy. As the offspring of the celebrated composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, among the most famous English composers of the 1900s, her identity was shrouded in the deep shadows of bygone eras.

The First Recording

Earlier this year, I reflected on these shadows as I prepared to make the first-ever recording of the composer’s piano concerto from 1936. Boasting emotional harmonies, expressive melodies, and confident beats, Avril’s work will provide audiences valuable perspective into how this artist – a composer during war who entered the world in 1903 – imagined her world as a woman of colour.

Shadows and Truth

But here’s the thing about shadows. One needs patience to acclimate, to see shapes as they truly exist, to tell reality from misrepresentation, and I was reluctant to face Avril’s past for a period.

I earnestly desired the composer to be her father’s daughter. To some extent, that held. The rustic British sounds of parental inspiration can be detected in numerous compositions, such as From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). Yet it suffices to look at the headings of her family’s music to realize how he heard himself as not only a standard-bearer of UK romantic tradition as well as a representative of the African diaspora.

At this point father and daughter appeared to part ways.

White America judged Samuel by the brilliance of his music rather than the his racial background.

Parental Heritage

During his studies at the Royal College of Music, the composer – the child of a Sierra Leonean father and a white English mother – turned toward his heritage. At the time the poet of color Paul Laurence Dunbar visited the UK in that era, the 21-year-old composer actively pursued him. He composed this literary work into music and the subsequent year incorporated his poetry for a musical work, Dream Lovers. Subsequently arrived the choral work that put Samuel on the map: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Based on the poet Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha, Samuel’s Hiawatha was an global success, notably for African Americans who felt shared pride as white America judged Samuel by the quality of his art instead of the his background.

Advocacy and Beliefs

Fame did not reduce his activism. At the turn of the century, he participated in the First Pan African Conference in the UK where he encountered the prominent scholar WEB Du Bois and saw a range of talks, including on the mistreatment of Black South Africans. He was a campaigner throughout his life. He kept connections with early civil rights leaders including the scholar and the educator Washington, spoke publicly on ending discrimination, and even discussed racial problems with President Theodore Roosevelt while visiting to the White House in that year. In terms of his art, Du Bois recalled, “he wrote his name so prominently as a musician that it will long be remembered.” He passed away in that year, aged 37. But what would her father have reacted to his offspring’s move to travel to South Africa in the mid-20th century?

Conflict and Policy

“Offspring of Renowned Musician gives OK to South African policy,” appeared as a heading in the Black American publication Jet magazine. The system “seems to me the correct approach”, she informed Jet. When pushed to clarify, she backtracked: she was not in favor with this policy “fundamentally” and it “could be left to work itself out, directed by benevolent South Africans of all races”. Had Avril been more in tune to her family’s principles, or from the US under segregation, she might have thought twice about the policy. But life had sheltered her.

Background and Inexperience

“I have a English document,” she said, “and the officials failed to question me about my race.” Thus, with her “light” appearance (as described), she floated alongside white society, supported by their admiration for her late father. She delivered a lecture about her father’s music at the Cape Town university and directed the South African Broadcasting Corporation Orchestra in the city, featuring the heroic third movement of her composition, titled: “Dedicated to my Father.” Even though a confident pianist personally, she avoided playing as the lead performer in her work. Instead, she invariably directed as the maestro; and so the apartheid orchestra performed under her direction.

The composer aspired, as she stated, she “could introduce a shift”. Yet in the mid-1950s, circumstances deteriorated. After authorities discovered her Black ancestry, she was forced to leave the land. Her UK document didn’t protect her, the UK representative recommended her departure or face arrest. She returned to England, feeling great shame as the magnitude of her inexperience dawned. “The lesson was a painful one,” she stated. Adding to her disgrace was the 1955 publication of her unfortunate magazine feature, a year after her forced leaving from the country.

A Common Narrative

As I sat with these memories, I perceived a familiar story. The narrative of being British until you’re not – one that calls to mind troops of color who fought on behalf of the UK during the World War II and made it through but were refused rightful benefits. Including those from Windrush,