I remember the shock when I got the results back for my 23 and Me test (that I drunkenly ordered back when I did drink).
So I’m pretty British. I was expecting that much, considering my government surname is Salisbury and I don’t think there exists a more British last name. (Except maybe like, Buckingham, or Worcestershire. Is that someone’s last name?) But I wasn’t expecting the sheer amount of Britishness I ended up being. Hardly anyone I know has gotten more than 90 percent of a particular ethnicity, and here I am more British than the late queen herself (probably).
Was I a little disappointed at first? Maybe. It felt like the most basic ethnic background I could have possibly gotten. We don’t speak a fun language that isn’t English, we’re so white the sun tries to kill us anytime we walk outside, and all we’re really known for is tea and trying to take over the world (and fucking things up for like, a bunch of other people in the process). And like, soccer and shit, but I never cared for sports. Why do I wanna watch a bunch of people I’ll never meet play a game? Wouldn’t you rather play the game yourself? I mean, I wouldn’t want to play personally, but that’s only because I suck at anything that involves silly concepts like “teams” and “balls.”
My point is, I didn’t think there was a whole lot to be proud of. Why couldn’t I have been born, well, anything else?
There had to be something cool about being British. It couldn’t all be earl grey and imperialism.
And then it hit me.
The thing I’m most passionate about.
Music!
What aspects of your cultural heritage are you most proud of or interested in?
It’s well-known that Black Americans invented rock and roll, but the British…well, I can’t say they perfected it, since, well, Black Americans also perfected it. But we Brits had a hand in codifying it into the behemoth of a genre it is today. The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Who, Pink Floyd, Queen, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Fleetwood Mac (well, partially at least)— it’s probably easier to list legendary rock bands that aren’t British.
So how did Britain become such a hotbed for rock music?
Thankfully, your favorite armchair ethnomusicologist is here to break it all down.
As this very well-written article explains, after World War II, Britain was pretty beat up and down bad. But in the 1950s, American rock music infiltrated the tiny country and re-energized a whole generation of folks. As the writer puts it, “…rock ’n’ roll arrived like a form of deliverance, an alien transmission that electrified British youth, literally driving them wild.” The Brits didn’t have any connection to the blues and folk that initially influenced the budding genre, so up-and-coming musicians had to rely on the records they were consuming to learn the ways of rock. At first, artists tried to mask their Britishness to fit in better with the American musicians they were learning from, but eventually, these artists began incorporating their own culture into their music. For example, it was uniquely British repression and rage that fed into subgenres like punk.
I found it strangely comforting to research British influence on rock music. Reading this stuff makes me feel like I’m part of something bigger than myself, that I actually do have a heritage I can be proud of. Although I’m only a second-generation British-American and have never visited the isles myself, I feel a connection to my ancestry through rock’s storied history. It’s kind of cool that music is what ties me to the land my family originated from, since music has been my entire life.
So, it’s actually kind of cool to be 93 percent British after all. (But like, I could live without the sun trying to kill me.)
JESSA JOYCE 