This was the most difficult assignment for me, so far.

I really appreciated Linda Salzman Sagan’s reflection on the process of collecting the sounds for The Sounds of Earth: “there was a sense of wonder to it and a sense of the ridiculous and the sublime” (Taylor, 2019). At the end of the day music is not something I have any training in, so I can’t come from the perspective of evaluating the kinds of music or what entries in musical history are particularly worthwhile to preserve. I thought about types of sound, countries of origin, population centers as all possible ways to sort and prioritize these tracks.

However, this is such a small selection that it demands the perspective of thinking about “what can we afford to lose” as mentioned by Dr. Smith Rumsey (2018). Practically speaking, if we are curating all the noise that people make to ten entries, we are losing everything. So having said all of this, and leaning into the sense of the ridiculous, these are just the ten tracks that I enjoyed the most while listening to this record.

Track list – titles taken from the NASA Golden Record track listing

• “Dark Was the Night,” written and performed by Blind Willie Johnson. 3:15
• Senegal, percussion, recorded by Charles Duvelle. 2:08
• Australia, Aborigine songs, “Morning Star” and “Devil Bird,” recorded by Sandra LeBrun Holmes. 1:26
• Japan, shakuhachi, “Tsuru No Sugomori” (“Crane’s Nest,”) performed by Goro Yamaguchi. 4:51
• Navajo Indians, Night Chant, recorded by Willard Rhodes. 0:57
• Beethoven, String Quartet No. 13 in B flat, Opus 130, Cavatina, performed by Budapest String Quartet. 6:37
• Solomon Islands, panpipes, collected by the Solomon Islands Broadcasting Service. 1:12
• Azerbaijan S.S.R., bagpipes, recorded by Radio Moscow. 2:30
• Georgian S.S.R., chorus, “Tchakrulo,” collected by Radio Moscow. 2:18
• China, ch’in, “Flowing Streams,” performed by Kuan P’ing-hu. 7:37

References

• Brown University. (2018). Abby Smith Rumsey: “Digital Memory: What Can We Afford to Lose?” [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBrahqg9ZMc
• Taylor, Dallas. (Host). (April 2019). Voyager Golden Record (No. 64) [Audio podcast episode].  In Twenty Thousand Hertz. Defacto Sound.  https://www.20k.org/episodes/voyagergoldenrecord