Task 8: Golden Record Curation

I had no illusions about the difficulty of this task – I knew it would be fun, but I did not for a moment think this would be easy. I spent a LOT of time listening to the tracks, some of which were completely unfamiliar to me. Initially, I wanted my choices to be intelligent, representative, and meaningful. If these tracks are the sounds that reflect all of humanity on Earth (Taylor, 2019), I wanted my curation of 10 to be equally representative. I wanted to ensure men and women were also equally represented, but I knew that was naïve.

The talks by both Dr. Rumsey and Taylor highlight the importance of space and choosing what we can “afford to lose” rather than what we can afford to keep. It is true that in today’s age of digitization, storage of media is not as big a problem (if at all), the real issue is who can afford to pay for data storage Brown University, 2017). Thus, the question is not about what we can keep, but what we cannot. The phrase “afford to lose”, however, may not necessarily be monetary value, but rather emotional or sentimental value. It is this, then, that finally decided my criteria for me. Emotions are what differentiate humans from machines. Emotions are well-expressed with music. Animals also express emotions and empathy. If an extraterrestrial intelligent life exists, I think I would want them to experience the emotions expressed through the music. I decided to focus on what emotions each piece of music evoked or represented, thus my criterion for my curation is very subjective. I tried to keep in mind the other aspects I want to try to balance, for example gender and cultural representation, but it is emotion I chose first.

The tracks I chose are the following:

1. Bach, The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 2, Prelude and Fugue in C, No.1. Glenn Gould, piano. 4:48 – happy, uplifting
2. Azerbaijan S.S.R., bagpipes, recorded by Radio Moscow. 2:30 – lamenting, hopeful
3. New Guinea, men’s house song, recorded by Robert MacLennan. 1:20 – the excitement and uncertainty of new beginnings.
4. Stravinsky, Rite of Spring, Sacrificial Dance, Columbia Symphony Orchestra, Igor Stravinsky, conductor. 4:35 – intense, dramatic, suspenseful
5. Peru, panpipes and drum, collected by Casa de la Cultura, Lima. 0:52 – fulfillment, like sitting around a fire with the community and sharing food and stories.
6. “Melancholy Blues,” performed by Louis Armstrong and his Hot Seven. 3:05 – hopeful, trip down memory lane kind of feeling.
7. Bulgaria, “Izlel je Delyo Hagdutin,” sung by Valya Balkanska. 4:59 – yearning, mournful.
8. China, ch’in, “Flowing Streams,” performed by Kuan P’ing-hu. 7:37 – relaxing, meditative.
9. Senegal, percussion, recorded by Charles Duvelle. 2:08 – happy, skip a beat, dance (also, the drums remind me of my home and childhood in Tanzania).
10. Japan, shakuhachi, “Tsuru No Sugomori” (“Crane’s Nest,”) performed by Goro Yamaguchi. 4:51 – peace and calm, accomplishment.

Overall, I am quite happy with my choices, and yes, I had to decide which ones of the 27 I could afford to let go of. There is something lost in limiting the choices only to ten, but there is also a lot to be said from these ten pieces. I hope they are able to evoke a range of emotions, connect to memories and forgotten parts of life, while also displaying the range of experiences and diversity Earth has to offer.

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References:

Brown University. (2017). Abby Smith Rumsey: “Digital Memory: What Can We Afford to Lose?”

NASA. (n.d.). Golden record: What’s on the record: Music from earth. Retrieved from https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/golden-record/whats-on-the-record/music/