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This talented musician constantly felt the weight of her family heritage. Being the child of the renowned Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, one of the best-known English artists of the early 20th century, the composer’s reputation was cloaked in the deep shadows of history.

A World Premiere

Earlier this year, I contemplated these legacies as I got ready to make the inaugural album of her piano concerto from 1936. Boasting impassioned harmonies, heartfelt tunes, and valiant rhythms, her composition will offer new listeners fascinating insight into how this artist – an artist in conflict who entered the world in 1903 – imagined her world as a woman of colour.

Shadows and Truth

However about the past. It can take a while to acclimate, to see shapes as they truly exist, to separate fact from misrepresentation, and I was reluctant to confront her history for a while.

I had so wanted her to be her father’s daughter. To some extent, that held. The idyllic English tones of Samuel’s influence can be heard in many of her works, for example From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). However, one need only examine the headings of her family’s music to understand how he heard himself as not just a flag bearer of English Romanticism but a voice of the African diaspora.

At this point parent and child appeared to part ways.

American society judged Samuel by the mastery of his music instead of the his ethnicity.

Samuel’s African Roots

During his studies at the Royal College of Music, Samuel – the offspring of a African father and a British mother – began embracing his heritage. When the Black American writer Paul Laurence Dunbar came to London in the late 19th century, the aspiring artist actively pursued him. He adapted this literary work as a composition and the following year used the poet’s words for a musical work, Dream Lovers. Then came 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 Black Americans who felt indirect honor as American society judged Samuel by the excellence of his compositions rather than the his race.

Principles and Actions

Fame did not temper his beliefs. At the turn of the century, he attended the pioneering African conference in London where he met the African American intellectual WEB Du Bois and witnessed a series of speeches, such as the oppression of the Black community there. He was an activist until the end. He kept connections with early civil rights leaders including the scholar and Booker T Washington, gave addresses on racial equality, and even talked about racial problems with the US President on a trip to the US capital in that year. As for his music, the scholar reflected, “he wrote his name so notably as a composer that it will endure.” He died in that year, aged 37. Yet how might Samuel have thought of his daughter’s decision to be in the African nation in the 1950s?

Conflict and Policy

“Offspring of Renowned Musician shows support to S African Bias,” ran a headline in the community journal Jet magazine. This policy “struck me as the right policy”, the composer stated Jet. When pushed to clarify, she backtracked: she didn’t agree with apartheid “as a concept” and it “could be left to run its course, overseen by well-meaning South Africans of all races”. Were the composer more in tune to her father’s politics, or born in the US under segregation, she could have hesitated about the policy. Yet her life had shielded her.

Identity and Naivety

“I possess a British passport,” she stated, “and the government agents never asked me about my background.” Therefore, with her “porcelain-white” appearance (as described), she moved among the Europeans, buoyed up by their admiration for her renowned family member. She gave a talk about her parent’s compositions at the University of Cape Town and led the broadcasting ensemble in the city, featuring the bold final section of her composition, subtitled: “In remembrance of my Father.” Although a confident pianist herself, she avoided playing as the soloist in her piece. Instead, she consistently conducted as the conductor; and so the segregated ensemble played under her baton.

She desired, as she stated, she “could introduce a change”. However, by that year, circumstances deteriorated. When government agents became aware of her Black ancestry, she had to depart the nation. Her citizenship offered no defense, the diplomatic official advised her to leave or risk imprisonment. She came home, feeling great shame as the scale of her innocence dawned. “The realization was a painful one,” she lamented. Compounding her embarrassment was the printing that year of her unfortunate magazine feature, a year after her sudden departure from that nation.

A Common Narrative

Upon contemplating with these legacies, I felt a familiar story. The narrative of holding UK citizenship until you’re not – one that calls to mind troops of color who fought on behalf of the UK in the World War II and made it through but were denied their due compensation. Including those from Windrush,