The Voyager Golden Record could be seen either as a frivolous waste of time or one of the most profound human gestures in history. The likelihood of any intelligent species coming upon it in the vastness of space is unimaginably low for a myriad of reasons, yet the time capsule is meant to last for over a billion years; even if the human species survives that long (and indeed it is barely a hundred thousand years old, with the invention of writing to a civilization capable of launching such a craft existing for only a couple thousand years, while multicellular life has been on the planet for a billion…), the sun is believed to reach the end of its life in 4-5 billion years and in doing so will expand to swallow and incinerate the planet Earth. How to leave a mark on the universe that we were here? Where to start? What to choose? The antiquated analogue technology is ingeniously superior to modern digital tools – rather than digital, which relies on software to make “real,” a record uses physical texture to encode the physical pressure waves of sounds. How a discoverer will listen to it or perceive it is unknown.

Now, to the task of curating the selections to a short-list of ten. Any attempt to represent humanity with a limited set of samples is by its very nature problematic. Indeed, as the principle producer of the Golden Record Tim Ferris said in interview with Twenty Thousand Hertz, nearly all of the music humans have ever made is left out, NOT on the record (Taylor, 2019). There are issues with representation, equity, and stereotyping that simply cannot be overcome.

Here is my list:

1. Brandenburg Concerto
2. Ketawang: Puspåwårnå (Kinds of Flowers)
3. Liu Shui (Flowing Streams)
4. Chakrulo
5. Muğam
6. Barnumbirr (Morning Star) and Moikoi Song
7. Navajo Night Chant, Yeibichai Dance
8. Bhairavi: Jaat Kahan Ho
9. Melancholy Blues
10. Izlel E Delyo Haydutin

My first strategy was to eliminate redundancy. There are several pieces of European orchestral music that could be reduced to one. My other intentions were to have major world regions represented once, to try to have a mix of instruments with little overlap, and to have a range of tempos and tones. If “music” cannot be interpreted they way we experience it, at least an alien would get a diverse range of sounds. Finally, given the choice, I would give equal time to nature sounds.