What 23 & Me could never give me
the drama of finding our (real) roots
Remember Ancestry.com and 23-and-me? That was some wild shiii. Everyone from myself to my friends’ grandparents thought it fascinating to find where they came from. Because our parents and grandparents definitely were not telling us. In my hometown of Columbus, Ohio, you were LUCKY if you had an elder with any piece of knowledge about their “old world” roots. Maybe someone had a grandmother with a pasta sauce recipe from her great grandfather who came to America, but that was about it.
On my father’s side of the family, which had all three of my family’s cool old world traditions, my grandfather had grown up speaking Canadian French and my grandmother grew up understanding the Magyar spoken by her immigrant grandparents in the coal mining town of Shawnee, Ohio. The thing is though, I never particularly knew what those heritages meant on an intimate level. What did it actually mean to be Hungarian and Canadian French? I understood neither of these languages, I had no connection to these cultures other than making Tourtiere and Kiffles at Christmas time.1 Worst of all, all of my relatives with an intimate knowledge of these cultures had died before I was born. If you ask me, that’s kind of a lame and shallow way to live out your heritage. No matter how much these DNA tests and ancestry revealed to me, It wasn’t really giving me much life–contrary to what I had hoped.
Surely, I have no doubt that those ancestry tests bring relief and connection for a lot of people, especially if they trace their heritage to a group that has experienced some widespread diaspora. But still, it wasn’t doing it for me.
In college, eager to resurrect some ethnic past that I was convinced could be recovered, I obsessed with learning every ounce of Hungarian tradition that my last surviving grandmother knew. I learned new Hungarian recipes. I made marhaporkolt (Hungarian beef stew) for my roommates, which was a random recipe I found online (I bet I tricked you by using the fancy Hungarian word and made you think that I was steeped in Hungarian culture). To make it, I borrowed some 40-year-old authentic Hungarian SSR-made Paprika that my grandmother pulled out of the basement of her split-level Vietnam-era house, and put that to good use. It didn’t really add much to the dish, but if anything, it added to the vibes. In that same era of college, I also took five days of Magyar on Duolingo (I dropped it because that language is difficult af). Yet, I had no community of Hungarians to support and refine this interest in a facet of my family’s history. It left me with nothing but frustration.
Instead of connecting myself to my family through reengaging with my ethnic heritage, I grew restless and mourned my lost hope for the culture that died out decades before. What really happened was that I latched onto what I perceived to be the most “ethnic” and “interesting” part of my family’s history. I said to myself: “I wasn’t just an ethnic mutt like everyone else in my hometown. I have culture! I have old world traditions!”.
It wasn’t until my senior year of my college education that I realized that that solution wasn’t to base my roots less in this “Hungarian” and “Acadian” tradition that no longer existed in my family. Whether I wanted to embrace it or not, what did play a role was my family’s “hillbilly” roots in Eastern Ohio. This realization came during our annual family Christmas party. During my senior year of high school, I remember sitting down in my grandmother’s basement at our annual Christmas bluegrass jam. I had heard my family play this music before, but it was mostly a backing track to playing tic-tac-toe with my weird Uncle John.
However, this all changed when I reached the end of high school. I remember one occasion, when at our Christmas jam when my 81-year-old cousin Victor played the tune “Eliza Jane” on a fiddle built in 1731. Inside this case lay pictures of my family members going back 100 years. They played it at gatherings and square dances in Southeastern Ohio. In fact, my great-great uncle had broken the fiddle when he was knocked down during a fist-fight at a square dance.
While I restlessly yearned for a European heritage, my family members carried on the long-lived culture of “hillbilly” music down in Grandma’s basement-year after year. Eventually, for one reason or another, I became obsessed with this style of music born in the Appalachian region of the United States. I learned songs handed onto me by my old Cousin Victor, and steeped myself in this aspect of my family’s story–lest I let this fall to time as well. I learned mandolin, guitar, banjo, and how to sing traditional songs.
After that Christmas, I had to foster this interest. Not only did my interest grow within my family, but I began to make the most out of the Bluegrass music scene in my hometown of Columbus. I attended concerts, jams, and cut my teeth with some of the best musicians in the city. I heard stories of Appalachian family members long past, but relished in the present experience of this music. This fascination was something I could own and intimately understand, and it flourished within a supportive community.
To be sure, my Hungarian and French-Canadian heritage is not lost on me. I can still make a mean Tourtierre and learned to roll Kiffles like a Hungarian grandmother. But this is all a less important facet of the story of my family who has lived in this country since before the Civil War. I had to mourn the passing of my family’s old world roots. But I found that grasping onto the more tangible elements of my immediate family’s culture fulfilled me in a way that 23 and Me never could.
Evan Vautour, a descendant of Appalachians in Ohio, migrated to New York City 2 years ago to work for a Catholic educational non-profit. He’s influenced by artists such as Ralph Stanley, Bill Monroe, and John Duffey. He plays mandolin and guitar. Follow him @evanvowtour
Ok, I lied. All two of our traditions. My family combines my grandfather’s French Canadian roots and my grandmother’s Hungarian roots (with a dash of Appalachia) every year at Christmastime. This results in Christmas Eve dinner being Tourtierre (meat pie), Kiffles (Hungarian nut rolls), a KFC chicken bucket, and creamed corn. It’s phenomenal.
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