The following are 10 of the pieces of music included on the Golden Record that was included on the Voyager spacecraft. I have chosen 10 of the 27 as a curated collection:

1. “Melancholy Blues,” performed by Louis Armstrong and his Hot Seven. 3:05
2. “Dark Was the Night,” written and performed by Blind Willie Johnson. 3:15
3. Mexico, “El Cascabel,” performed by Lorenzo Barcelata and the Mariachi México. 3:14
4. China, ch’in, “Flowing Streams,” performed by Kuan P’ing-hu. 7:37
5. India, raga, “Jaat Kahan Ho,” sung by Surshri Kesar Bai Kerkar. 3:30
6. Navajo Indians, Night Chant, recorded by Willard Rhodes. 0:57
7. Beethoven, Fifth Symphony, First Movement, the Philharmonia Orchestra, Otto Klemperer, conductor. 7:20
8. Georgian S.S.R., chorus, “Tchakrulo,” collected by Radio Moscow. 2:18
9. Australia, Aborigine songs, “Morning Star” and “Devil Bird,” recorded by Sandra LeBrun Holmes. 1:26
10. Zaire, Pygmy girls’ initiation song, recorded by Colin Turnbull. 0:56

I chose these 10 based first on music that I personally enjoy and would choose to listen to, which oddly ended up being only the first 3 of my selections. Most of the pieces included on the Golden Record are not songs that I would personally ever choose to listen to! The rest I picked somewhat haphazardly to try to get some semblance of geographic and racial diversity represented in my curation. With the limited selection on the Golden Record, and being limited to a total of 10 pieces, this proved challenging to determine what to include. The Golden Record did attempt to do this, but was compiled from a very white, American, euro-centric perspective, that seems to have limited if any input from other cultures. The heavy inclusion of Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart and their belief that they are superior pieces of music due to their supposed mathematical perfection shows some of the bias of the original compilers. The lack of more modern popular music also displays a bias against it and dampens the ability of the record to be representative of a greater diversity of cultures and time periods of humanity. It is also unclear if the other countries and cultures would choose the same music to represent them if they had been given a voice. Ultimately, my selection after the first 3 pieces is an attempt at a somewhat random distribution of different continents, cultures, and countries, with an attempt made at not over-representing any one continent.