Task #8 

“All recorded information, from the paintings on the walls of caves and drawings in the sand, to clay tablets and videotaped speeches, has value, even if temporary, or it would not have been recorded to begin with “(Smith, 1999, pg 2).  For this reason, it was extremely difficult to choose which pieces of music to choose to keep on the shortlist for the Golden Record. All songs and sounds from Earth have value, but which ones have enduring value? Which songs would be the best introduction for exterrestrials to human life? 

I am not a historian or a musician, so it was challenging for me to shortlist 27 songs to 10 songs that would represent life on Earth. As I listened to the Golden Record songs, I decided to focus on the songs that included vocals. This would give the exterrestrials a sampling of human voices at different frequencies, various languages, dialects and tones. This narrowed the song choices down to 12 songs: 

Wedding song – Peru

Mozart – Queen of the night- Eda Moser (Germany)

Tchakrulo – Choir – Georgia

Morning Star and Devil Bird- Australia

Navajo Night Chant – America

Johnny B Goode – Chuck Berry (American)

Jaat Kahan Ho – India – Surshri

Iziel je Delyo Hagdutin – Bulgaria

Dark was the night-Blind Willie Johnson – (American)

El Cascabel-Lorenzo Barcelata&the Mari (Mexico)

Kinds of Flowers (China)

Pygmy Girls Initiation Song- Zaire

 

Once I had the songs narrowed down to only songs that contained vocals, I examined the list of countries and tried to choose songs that were representative of songs around the world. Although it looks like Sagan and his team attempted to do a similar task, l think it is important to recognize that this team was mostly male, white and from a Western culture. If the team had been chosen during a different time period or location in the world, the sampling of songs would have been different.  

With geography in mind, I realized that 3 of the 12 songs were from the United States of America. I opted to keep the Navajo Night Chant, as I thought it was important to have the North American Indigeous population represented. Therefore, I narrowed the Golden Record down to the following 10 songs: 

 

1. Wedding song – Peru

2. Mozart – Queen of the night- Eda Moser (Germany)

3. Tchakrulo – Choir – Georgia

4. Morning Star and Devil Bird- Australia

5. Navajo Night Chant – America

6. Jaat Kahan Ho – India – Surshri

7. Iziel je Delyo Hagdutin – Bulgaria

8. El Cascabel-Lorenzo Barcelata&the Mari (Mexico)

9. Kinds of Flowers (China)

10. Pygmy Girls Initiation Song- Zaire

This was a good task as it allowed us to experience the preparation, thought and justification that goes into digitization. The texts that we decide to digitize become our records of the past and in this case, may introduce us to our future. I am looking forward to reading the different techniques that my classmates used to compile their lists. 

Reference:

Smith Rumsey, A. (1999, February). Why Digitize? Retrieved June 15, 2019, from Council on Library and Information Resources website: https://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub80-smith/pub80-2/