A Journey of My Musical Heritage: Is Music Talent in DNA?

This is my newest project, and I hope you’ll join me as I explore the musical history of my ancestors. If you share any with me, perhaps you’ll learn about your own as well!

As far back as my family goes, we’ve always been musical. My dad is a drummer and played with Tony Bennett, Santana and many others. My grandma played the organ, and my great grandma was a piano player in silent movie theaters. According to my grandma, people loved when she played because she had a great sense of comedic timing with the film. She knew when to do a slide or hit certain keys to make the audience laugh.

On my mother’s side, my grandfather played horns in a band. He could read sheet music, so he made twice as much as the other players, at $6 per night.

Going further back, there is this dude:

I don’t know who he is, but he’s in my family photo album and I’m sure he could rock that drum.

My family gatherings always involve music. Drums, pianos and guitars are brought and singers lead. Music is a big thing to us.

When my grandma died last year, I was of course sad to lose her, but I was also said to lose the last connection to the past that I have. I’ve become enamored with learning my heritage and discovering where my ancestors come from.

My grandma didn’t really know her heritage. She guessed some French and German, but I don’t know what she was basing that on. My mother thinks she is mostly Hungarian, but I don’t know how much. Now there is a way to find out.

Enter DNA testing.

I held off on doing this for a long time. I’ve heard the reports that they share your data, they aren’t accurate, and they are geared mostly toward white people, so I thought “whatever, I don’t need to know.”

Here’s why I changed my mind: 1). They had a Black Friday sale, 2). My friend was doing it, and 3). I didn’t have a new music project lined up. Those are my honest reasons, along with my curiosity.

Have you tested your DNA? Tweet at me and let me know!

I took a DNA test! Click To Tweet

My DNA Results

I’m sure it’s not shocking to see that I’m 99.99% white, haha. However, the percentages don’t make a lot of sense to me. The parts that say “Broadly European” could actually add more of a percentage to any of the other categories. For example, I could actually be 23% French, or 15% Greek. They aren’t really specific with it, so I have to do some guesswork here.

Here is my video explaining my results:

The Musical DNA Project

My plan is to go through each of these and explore their musical history. I love history so this will be fun for me, but I promise to make it fun for those of you who don’t love history as much as I do. This won’t be a boring project, I swear! I’ve already finished my first project, Polish Music. This fits into my top percentage of DNA, so that will be coming next week!

Comments

Eddie says
January 31, 2019 at 1:17 am

Thats really fascinating! I have a neice in the family who plays violin and sister who used to play clarinet, but other then that no one in my family’s history past has been musical. Where can the test be taken? I gotta try myself!
- MellaMusic says
  January 31, 2019 at 3:55 pm
  
  It’s a 23 and Me test! To be fair they don’t mention anything about your musical ability in the test, haha, but that’s going to be my own research to see if I can connect any dots!
Gracie says
February 3, 2019 at 3:05 am

Woah! I’ve been wondering about these DNA tests recently since a couple of my friends have purchased them.
Although my belief is that music is more nurture than nature, I can’t wait for your follow up posts!
Gracie recently posted…Best Budget Bass Drum Pedal 2019 (below $60!)
- MellaMusic says
  February 3, 2019 at 7:57 pm
  
  Thanks so much! I agree, and doing my research I’m learning that SO much of our musical tastes are influenced by our surroundings, but it’s an interesting learning experience so far!