Here’s a brief reflection on brand mythology and where my recent thinking has been in relation to my work at Glitter Records.
As a writer, I’ve always been drawn to other people and other subcultures. Running a record store — handling very old records and other fragments of social history — constantly pushes me beyond my own assumptions. It reminds me that music, culture, and identity are always in motion.
Recently, I’ve been trying to continue to deepen my perspective more intentionally. I’ve been doing so by looking more closely at what makes Brisbane’s culture unique. That search led me to Archie Moore, a Kamilaroi and Bigambul artist; Maroochy Barambah, Turrbal and Gubbi Gubbi song woman; and Vincent Serico, a painter from the Bidjara people. Reflecting on their unique creative output, along with reading books on the history of the Cherbourg mission — where families were displaced after living in one place for tens of thousands of years — has led me to think about my own roots.
Moore, Barambah, and Serico have reconnected with their histories and created powerful new art and music. Seeing this made me wonder whether my own ancestry might also hold inspiration, or perhaps inform the future direction of Glitter Records’ visual identity and curation.
Witnessing cultures with deep continuity made me consider whether my own family’s migrations masked other threads. It also made me curious about the old family folklore I grew up with. Whether some of the stories were true.
Kith and Kin – the Idea of Ancestry as Myth
Archie Moore’s Kith and Kin is a large‑scale art installation mapping his family history across more than 65,000 years. He draws a sprawling family tree in white chalk across black walls, connecting ancestors, kinship lines, language groups, and cultural histories. But the work isn’t a literal genealogy. It’s conceptual. A cosmic diagram of identity.
Kith and Kin uses the family tree as a visual motif, not in the narrow genealogical sense but as a map of ancestry, memory, and myth. Moore’s work touches on the modern fascination with DNA tests and online family trees while critiquing their Eurocentrism and limits. It suggests that identity is bigger than data points. It stretches into story, imagination, and the cosmos.
After recently reading the monograph of Kith and Kin picked up from the IMA Store — along with Moore’s earlier Archie Moore 1970–2018 — and after discussions with friends and family, it felt sensible to begin to learn more about my own history. As a first setp I took a DNA test as a simple gesture toward seeing what information might come to light.
What the DNA of Riley Fitzgerald, Founder of Glitter Records, Reveals
My AncestryDNA results span ten regions across Europe. Most of my heritage sits in Celtic and Gaelic Ireland:
- Munster (43%)
- Leinster (14%)
- Central Scotland & Northern Ireland (5%)
- Connacht (2%)
The English threads include:
- Southeastern England & Northwestern Europe (15%)
- North East England (4%)
- West Midlands (4%)
- Cornwall (3%)
- East Midlands (3%)
And one final line reaches into:
- Northwestern Germany (7%)
These numbers are intriguing threads for brand mythology and storytelling. A microcosm of the history of the British Isles. I’ve also connected with Irish DNA groups and begun the Big Y DNA test to explore Irish‑Norman heritage and how it links back to the poetry and myths of medieval Ireland and Wales.
Other Stories Data Doesn’t Capture
DNA doesn’t tell you everything. A family tree reveals more. On my mother’s side — the Beauchamp line — there appear three convicts. One of them is Elizabeth Mandeville, a woman of colour and the daughter of a freed slave. She was tried at the Old Bailey in London on 6 April 1808 for theft. The court found her guilty and sentenced her to seven years’ transportation.
Departing England in June 1808 and arriving in New South Wales in December that year. Like many women in early colonial Australia, she lived through poverty, violence, and the harsh reality of transportation.
Her death was recorded in Sydney in 1821, described as an alcohol‑related tragedy in The Rocks. Witnesses reported she collapsed in Cambridge Street after drinking heavily, was likely robbed, and died, potentially during childbirth. Her life forms a striking moment in my mother’s family history.
Other Threads For Brand Mythology
Alongside the convict links, much of my ancestry comes from rural folk displaced by poverty and hunger. Many left the small villages they had been rooted in for generations to seek new opportunities in Australia. Other threads run deeper. Some lines carry legendary warrior surnames, such as the MacLeods of the Isle of Skye.
The Fitzgeralds — the Geraldines — were not only powerful Anglo‑Norman magnates but also skilled myth‑makers. As Aisling Byrne writes in her 2016 book chapter “The Geraldines and the Culture of the Wider World,” their identity was imagined across a broad European canvas. They cultivated cultural links with contemporary Florence and, like many medieval dynasties, projected their lineage back to a Roman‑Trojan origin.
In truth, these Florentine, Roman, and Trojan connections are mythological rather than historical fact. Medieval writers shaped these stories to explain origins and place the Geraldines within a wider cultural landscape. In this tradition, the Fitzgerald narrative begins with a Trojan origin story, moves through the Gherardini of Florence, written of by Machiavelli in The Florentine Histories, continues into France and then medieval Ireland, and appears again in the 1800s. Today, that long arc of movement and cultural imagination stretches into Australia, Canada, the United States and many other places where the family name has travelled.
Mapping My Ancestry and Its Role in Brand Mythology
These pieces form my own kind of cosmic constellation. Some points are clear, others murky. Together, they sketch the outline of a story that feeds directly into why I’m here and the life I’m building.
Brand mythology, in this context, is the set of meanings a business builds around itself over time — the stories, symbols, values, and personal history that give the brand emotional weight beyond commerce. It’s something arrived at through years of reading, experimenting, and shaping Glitter Records by trial and error. It’s the creative expression of a deeper narrative. Something that helps people understand why my record store is here and what it stands for.
Within brand mythology, ancestry becomes a rich seam of symbols and stories. It holds migration, resilience, reinvention, continuity, fact, fiction, rupture, and return. These themes already shape Glitter Records. They can now guide the store’s connection to history, art, music, and poetry. They offer source material for a more authentic visual identity and storytelling grounded in a broader continuity of human experience.
