In 1997, NASA sent two phonograph records aboard the Voyager spacecraft in 1977. The phonographs include 27 musical pieces carefully curated to tell a story about The Sounds of Earth to any possible alien life that finds it. In this task, I will be curating an even smaller selection of only 10 of the 27 pieces in the original. 

Abby Smith Rumsey (2017) explains how when selecting what to store digitally, often librarians and historians have to ask themselves What can we afford to lose? If we are to continue knowing our story based on what is digitized, curators have a great responsibility when selecting. She also explains that for example for Physicists what data to store becomes more clear, as they know exactly what is needed and what is not. On the contrary for Astronomers it is not so straight forward, as she explains they don’t know yet what is needed or essential. 

If we were to see the phonographs in the Voyager as the only piece of evidence about Earth left, then the question would be what can we afford to lose? We will have to see this task as to what NOT to include. Nonetheless, the purpose of the phonographs in the Voyager is to provide a snapshot of Earth to extraterrestrial life. In other words, I see it as a dating profile, inviting those extraterrestrial beings to come and get to know us more. Therefore for the task, I will be focusing on what to include, and I won’t get concerned about what is not included. If I were to be concerned about what is not included the list would go on and on, so many different cultures that cannot be identified in such a short selection. 

My criteria for selection is to have a diverse selection of music based on personal enjoyment, or following Mari Kondo rules for selecting what to keep, I’ll be selecting on the basis of what sparks joy. I will first try to listen to songs from different locations/cultures, and whatever I enjoy, I will include. This selection is completely biased towards culturally what I have learned to enjoy. As Abby Smith Rumsey (2017) suggests archives and historical records should be curated for their own communities and areas of expertise. Since this task is being only curated by me, and I have no expertise or cultural connection to many of the selections originally included, my selection is heavily biased. I tried to find more information for the different songs included to see if I could understand a little bit more about the connection and selection. For those that I found something interesting I have included it.

Below is my selection:

  1. “Melancholy Blues,” performed by Louis Armstrong and his Hot Seven.
  2. “Johnny B. Goode,” written and performed by Chuck Berry
  3. “Dark Was the Night,” written and performed by Blind Willie Johnson.
  4. Mexico, “El Cascabel,” performed by Lorenzo Barcelata and the Mariachi México
  5. Peru, wedding song, recorded by John Cohen (The singer of this song is a young girl of Huancavelica. It is sung in Quechua, a language of the indigenous people in South America. The title of the song came from translating the last word in the song – Wedding. The chorus of the song repeats the words “what a fool I was, stupid fool.)
  6. Bach, The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 2, Prelude and Fugue in C, No.1. Glenn Gould, piano 
  7. Navajo Indians, Night Chant, recorded by Willard Rhodes (a healing ritual, designed both to cure people who are sick and to restore the order and balance of human relationships within the Navajo universe. I like the component about balance.)
  8. Georgian S.S.R., chorus, “Tchakrulo,” (A pre-battle chant)
  9. Solomon Islands, panpipes, collected by the Solomon Islands Broadcasting Service.
  10. China, ch’in, “Flowing Streams,” performed by Kuan P’ing-hu

 

References

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

Misreader. “Voyaging: The ‘Wedding Song’ Singer, Citations, and Space Junk.” Medium, Medium, 13 Dec. 2019, medium.com/@Misreader/voyaging-the-wedding-song-singer-citations-and-space-junk-637770349cc.