Golden Record Curation
I have curated ten musical pieces from the Voyager Golden Record. The particulars and criteria were influenced by NASA’s stated goal of the record, to have a diverse style of music representing Earth (NASA, undated).
The Voyager message is carried by a phonograph record, a 12-inch gold-plated copper disk containing sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth (NASA, undated).
In the podcast entitled. Twenty Thousand Hertz, Linda Salsman Sagan stated that she thought the record was a message of peace, joyful; and Tim Ferris stated with regard to the record that the message he thought they were sending to another world was “we are here and we are listening” (insert citation). (Actually I thought the thought should have been, we are here and hope you are listening).
Ms. Sagan and Mr. Ferris were part of Carl Sagan’s team that curated the music. Tim Farris has described the process by which the music was reviewed and selected as follows (2017):
In those days, we had to obtain physical copies of every recording we wanted to listen to include. This wasn’t such a challenge for, say, mainstream American music, but we aimed to cast a wide net, incorporating selections from places as disparate as Australia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, China, Congo, Japan, the Navajo Nation, Peru and the Solomon Island. Ann found an LP containing the Indian raga “Jaat Kahan Ho” in a carton under a cared table in the back of an appliance store. At one point, the folklorist Alan Lomax pulled a Russian recording, said to the be the sole copy of “Chakrulo” in North America, from a stack of lacquier demos and sailed it across the room to me like a Frisbee. We’d comb though all this music individually, them meet and go over our nominees in long discussions stretching into the night. It was exhausting, involving, utterly delightful work.
It seems to me to have been a rather underwhelming attempt to gather music which would in fact represent the diversity and culture of the entire world. Yes, it was 1972, but that is not the dark ages. (I was a young kid in 1972). But in my experience, there would have been ample opportunity to pick up the phone, or write a letter to a colleague or contact in another country, ask them to suggest and send some albums with music that represented their culture. Abby Smith Rumsey (2018) states at her Brown University lecture, that it is important what is and what is not chosen to be preserved or chosen as being important enough to create a digital memory. In the case of the selection of the music for the Voyager Golden Record, it was very important what was selected, and why, however it seems that not enough thought and effort was actually put into this record and the goal of representing world diversity and culture was likely not met.
So, my criteria focused on trying to select from the choices given ten pieces that reflected diversity and culture of the world. And then, because I am biased like everyone else, within that dynamic I picked my favorite music pieces to be included.
- Bach, Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 in F, First Movement.
Provenance: German composer, European, Western music
The first because it is simply my favorite piece of music on the Golden Record. Further, im Ferris (2017) suggests that music by Bach and Beethoven possessed mathematical properties that might be able to be understood by extra terrestrials. That is n interesting point. I might have selected them for those reasons but also, because that music is revered in the Western world and has been for hundreds of years – something that might valid those choices.
In selecting Western classical music, we sacrificed a measure of diversity to include three compositions by J. S. Bach and two by Ludwig van Beethoven. To understand why we did this, imagine that the record were being studied by extraterrestrials who lacked what we would call hearing, or whose hearing operated in a different frequency range than ours, or who hadn’t any musical tradition at all. Even they could learn from the music by applying mathematics, which really does seem to be the universal language that music is sometimes said to be. They’d look for symmetries—repetitions, inversions, mirror images, and other self-similarities—within or between compositions. We sought to facilitate the process by proffering Bach, whose works are full of symmetry, and Beethoven, who championed Bach’s music and borrowed from it.
- Bach, The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 2, Prelude and Fugue in C, NO. 1, Glenn Gould.
Provenance: German composer, European, Western music
I selected this piece because of the instrument – just the piano. It is a beautiful piece by Bach and played by that great Canadian, Glenn Gould. The reverence of the single instrument, the two hands providing the harmony in an intricate arrangement. Again Western music and again written in 1722 has stood up to the test of time (Wikipedia, undated).
- China, Flowing Streams.
Provenance: China
Now we are starting our tour of the world, in an effort to present a diversity of music to represent different cultures around the world. I personally, might not have chosen this piece if there were other options. (See my comments above, where it appears that Sagan et al found music pieces from far flung countries in a haphazard way in New York City. A consultation with any Chinese musicians or music scholars might well have resulted in another piece of music representing Chinese culture. And, given that the population of China is approximately
- Japan, Shakuhachi, “Tsuru No Sugomori”
Provenance: Japan
- Australia, Aborigine songs, “Morning Star” and “Devil Bird”.
Provence: Australia, Indigenous song (not an imported English/Australian song thankfully)
My reasons are the same as set out above. Needed cultural diversity. Australia, indigenous.
- Peru, panpipes and drum, collected by Casa de la Cultura, Lima
Provenance: South American, indigenous
My reasons for this choice are similar to those sent out above. It is a song that may be representative of a different part of the world, different culture. It is a song from the indigenous peoples of Peru (not a song imported from the conquers).
- Senegal, percussion, recorded by Charles Duvelle
Provenance: Senegal, Africa.
My reasons for this choice are similar to those sent out above. It is a song that may be representative of a different part of the world, different culture.
- Navajo Indians, night chant
Provenance: American native.
I chose this to represent the Native Americans (not the Europeans who settled the US).
- India, raga, “Jaat Kahan Ho”, sung by Surshri Kesar Bai Kerkar
Provence: India (Southeast Asia)
This is the song that Sagan et al found by happenstance. Not a lot of choices appear to have been reviewed for this choice – but we need an Indian voice / Southeast Asian influence.
- Beethoven, Fifth Symphony, First Movement.
Provenance: German, Europe, Western music
Okay, okay. I know that I am adding more classical music, but I cannot help myself. Beethoven’s 5th could have been in the top three for me. Premiering in 1804, the work is almost 200 years old and is still revered – world wide. Let’s end this list of ten with a bang and add Beethoven’s 5th. (Yes it has the mathematical qualities that Tim Farris discussed, but it is the orchestration, the composition, that has had me entranced forever).
What Sagan Missing
There are two categories of music that I want to note that Carl Sagan et al missed. First a true, objective, informed representation of global music. Second, in my opinion, some of the greatest music created in the Western (limited to the Western world because that is my experience).
These include.
- Elgar – Nimrod (from “Enigma Variations”)
Provenance: English composer. Work written in 1899
This is one of my favorite classical pieces. Can you listen to it without tears in your eyes.
- Andrea Bocelli (or any other decent Italian opera singer) singing Nessun Dorma.
Provenance: Italian. Nessun Dorma is from the final act of Puccini’s opera Turandot.
Just listen. Full of emotion. If this cannot tell the extraterrestrials what we are about, nothing can.
- Supertramp, Fool’s Overture
Provenance: English, modern rock. 1977. (In fairness to Sagan et al, this song was not commercially released until after the Voyager Golden Record was made.
Sorry – this description is from Wikipedia:.
“Fool’s Overture” is the closing track from Supertramp‘s 1977 album Even in the Quietest Moments…. Written and sung by guitarist/keyboardist Roger Hodgson, the song is a collage of progressive instrumentation and sound samples. First there are excerpts of Winston Churchill‘s famous 4 June 1940 House of Commons speech regarding Britain’s involvement in World War II (“Never Surrender”), and later sounds of police cars and bells from the London’s Big Ben clock tower are heard. The flageolet-sounding instrument plays an excerpt from Gustav Holst‘s “Venus”, from his orchestral suite The Planets. There is also a reading of the first verse of William Blake‘s poem “And did those feet in ancient time” (more commonly known as “Jerusalem”), ended by a short sample of the band’s song “Dreamer“.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0eVuIxJRp8
References
Ferris, T. (2017). How the Voyager Golden Record Was Made, The New Yorker. https://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/voyager-golden-record-40th-anniversary-timothy-ferris
NASA, undated, Voyager Golden Record, retrieved from https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/golden-record/ on July 3, 2020.
Smith Rumsey, A (2018). Digital Memory: What Can We Afford to Lose. Brown University.
The Well-Tempered Claiver, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Well-Tempered_Clavier retrieved on July 3, 2020.