Paring down the Golden Record from 27 to 10 tracks was a difficult task, and the variance in how my colleagues made their choices was very interesting to see. From Peter’s randomized number selection to Anne’s representation of humanity, to Carlo’s choice of variety in form and location, every mind thought differently about what was worth keeping and what was acceptable to lose. However, it was Marwa’s post that blew me away. I do not think any other post or selection criteria was as detailed, thorough or analytical as Marwa’s. The sheer amount of work she put forth in making her choices is a very clear indication of the scope and difficulty of this task. The initial 27 tracks were chosen with great care by some of the most deserving people, and I cannot begin to imagine how difficult it must have been for them to choose only these 27 from an infinite number of choices. To further pare this down to 10, however challenging that was, it was only 27 that we had to choose from.
My selection criteria primarily is based on emotional range and secondarily on gender and cultural representation. The latter was initially more important to me, however, when we had our video chat, Ernesto mentioned how he felt that the piece from Mexico, El Cascabel, while great, was not fully representative of Mexican music and/or culture. Coming from an Indian heritage, and as someone who listens to a lot of Indian music, I had similar feelings about the piece from India. Kesarbai Kerkar was a legendary musician, and ragas as the blocks of Indian classical music, are the basis for most Indian music. However, this piece, in my opinion, does not represent the vast Indian music industry or the music of the people. Thus, this decided it for me – what if other people from the other cultures feel the same way about the pieces from their countries?
When I look at Marwa’s analysis, she reorganized the pieces from the Golden Record on a spreadsheet and created charts based on geography, culture and gender representation. She saw biases in all three, which the cynical (realistic) part of me already knew existed before I even looked at the list or her graphs. Marwa found limitations even in the time period that the songs were clustered in, and finally she highlights the inaccuracies in proper attribution of the pieces. These last two factors were not something I had paid attention to, but seeing her analysis of it did not surprise me. I agree completely with the quote she chose here: “This lack of proper attribution of Non-Western is a frequent occurrence (Diamond,1990)” (as cited in Nelson & Polansky, 1993, p. 361). Regardless, Marwa’s selection criteria relies on inclusivity – she prioritized geographical representation, followed by diversity in genre and form, followed by gender representation. She has detailed her rationale for each piece with what it represents as well as the musical instruments used within it.
When I compared both of our choices, I found that we actually had 5 songs in common with each other!
Our selection criteria and analysis, as different as it may look at the surface, actually resulted in a 50% match. As I mention in my network analysis, my highest match was 7 tracks with Chelan, thus, a match of 5 tracks is a pretty good match in my opinion. Also as with the network task, and despite Marwa’s extensive analysis, it is not easy to say why she specifically chose the tracks that she did. Why did she choose Melancholy Blues and El Cascabel specifically to represent North America from all the others? Similarly, why Mozart’s The Magic Flute only and not the others? She chose the Wedding Song from Peru, and I chose the Panpipes and Drum from Peru. Why so? Why did she not choose the Bagpipes from Azerbaijan or the Men’s House Song from New Guinea? I think that despite her analysis and selection criteria, there is still some subjectivity in the final choices. Ultimately, she probably chose the tracks that she liked most from the options she had. So, in some ways, I guess, our selections were done in reverse of each other, which might explain an exact 50% match? Or so I assume, anyway.
Artifact layout:
Marwa’s blogsite has a dark coloured sidebar on the left with a customized site logo and menus, with a white background for the main page. She has her introduction on the homepage. The layout and customized logo both give away her computing background. Her website is very easy to navigate, and everything is easily found. Like mine, her tasks also include a featured image that teases what the content is about. Marwa’s posts are all very thorough and I have learned a lot from them.