Fun story about my Dad, a DNA test and my British rock band Sherlock Soul.
One of the reasons my Dad is really giving me a DNA test for Christmas is because he is hoping myself and his brother come up German. He thought we had this German blood. We were supposed to be related to a German king.
There were a lot of German kings, because until Martin Luther made one German language with his Bible, and Bach made Germany one nation under a groove, the road to Germany’s national identity was uncertain.
They could call themselves Kings, but they were a quilt of Princes with their little Principalities, full of Germanics Barons who reveled at the chance to let Luther defy The Pope and translate his Bible, and stop paying Rome any more tribute. Let the Bloody Reformation begin!
The theory of Thucydides Trap did not truly play out in Germany as a true nation, until the First World War. That’s when Germany and its flag threatened to reshuffle a New World Order by unifying the strength of its Germanic peoples to challenge both England and France and Russia in that two front field of death.
The idea Germans have always made amazing products (that’s the Swiss), are a nation as old as the supposedly young United States (Where did Prussia go then?), and represent the city of Leavenworth (Bavaria is just Kentucky), is all the magic of ingenius branding.
Just because we keep saying Germans have always made fine products, only means it eventually became true. When I learned this I thought, this is the trick my industrious and influential Nigerian friends should apply.
Mtrill Teria and Ayodele Ogunrinde, imagine if Nigeria could convince themselves and the world they have always made luxury cars. Because Nigeria absolutely could (as they should). That’s that Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia type sh☆t and it works.
But beyond the rebranding issues that eventually got Germany in a heap of trouble, there were ancient events and real characters that got us to the point of one Germany we have known since the 1990s. Most notably the World’s greatest turn coat and national hero Arminius, the Germanic Chieftain who was a member of the Roman military, but secretly plotted in 9 AD to slaughter three Roman Legions in the Teutoberg Forest.
There are still piles of Italian bones in those woods. The bones of men who thought Arminius a friend. A deception which stopped the advance of Romanization of the Barbarians cold (Germanic people sounded like “barrr barrr baarrr” to Roman ears as Americans do today to foreign ears).
My father thought we were a part of all that. Sure Anglo Saxons were Germanic and they colonized Gaelic and Pictish people of England. Thus the English and the British crown especially are quite German. But supposedly they are seperate enough through lets say inbreeding and the alignment of bad teeth to be distinguishable by a mouth swab.
Well maybe not the British crown because that’s just a house of enterprising German royals with that baby maker Victoria that populated every royal house with her babies until millions had to die in trenches of machine guns and mustard gas. Facts.
Ahhh but that feeling of walking amongst your ancestors when such ancients were afoot.
But part of the same feeling of being home I felt in England as I did on the Taino Isles of Jamaica and Puerto Rico was confirmed by the shock of my father that he came up as a solid stock of the British Isles. Of course the Scandinavian was there, but that is ultimately quite British and very much Irish. Even Niamh OConnell came up 1% Scandinavian. That is just genuine invader blood.
But i consoled my father by saying our Norse blood was north German. After all when the German were pagan slaughtering Romans they worshipped Woden, which is really just the Norse God Oden.
Myself, along with the news I was a Zulu warrior, Nigerian, Congo, Moorish, and all these Africans through my Mother’s Puerto Rican spirit of unity, I was really damn British.
And as the American singer in an English Rock band, I felt a tinge of greater kinship with all the characters I wrote about in Sherlock Soul, even the awful ones.
Even my Irish blood is Scot Irish, British invaders of the 1600s.
So when I take my test for Christmas, instead of just parsing that of my parents heritage, will my father get his Christmas present that some of this English Saxon blood will ring up as a product of some Barbarian tribe of Germany.
We shall see. But until then, I am quite British and I guess that makes me a Gentleman. No actually that doesn’t. Colonizer? Like the Zulu Kings before them, Yes.
Now what is this trap I speak of?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_T._Allison
EXTRA EXTRA: Have you ever heard of Merica’s German Belt? Many Dutch farmers are secretly Germans, but the Kaiser made the Jerries so very uncool.
Davin’s new song has become a global earworm and Caribbean dancehall hit. Listen here on Reggaeville: DAVIN MICHAEL STEDMAN & ANTHONY RED ROSE – FREE YOUR MIND FEAT. SLY & ROBBIE WITH LENKY MARSDEN. The video is now available on Youtube.
– Musician and writer Davin Michael Stedman has many ventures, such as the AMAZING blog, 100milesofmusic.com. In the spring of 2018 he spent weeks networking in and reporting from Kingston, Jamaica. He will return there soon for more recording. His single with British band Sherlock Soul is available here.
