Here is my list of songs:
- Bach, Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 in F. First Movement, Munich Bach Orchestra, Karl Richter, conductor. 4:40
- Senegal, percussion, recorded by Charles Duvelle. 2:08
- New Guinea, men’s house song, recorded by Robert MacLennan. 1:20
- Japan, shakuhachi, “Tsuru No Sugomori” (“Crane’s Nest,”) performed by Goro Yamaguchi. 4:51
- Peru, panpipes and drum, collected by Casa de la Cultura, Lima. 0:52
- “Melancholy Blues,” performed by Louis Armstrong and his Hot Seven. 3:05
- Azerbaijan S.S.R., bagpipes, recorded by Radio Moscow. 2:30
- Beethoven, Fifth Symphony, First Movement, the Philharmonia Orchestra, Otto Klemperer, conductor. 7:20
- Solomon Islands, panpipes, collected by the Solomon Islands Broadcasting Service. 1:12
- China, ch’in, “Flowing Streams,” performed by Kuan P’ing-hu. 7:37
I found this task extremely challenging. As I went through the golden record and listened to all these wonderful pieces, I kept thinking who am I here to decide which one is more important than the other, for the all reflect an unique aspect of human creation and humanity. As Smith mentioned in her 2017 speech, it is difficult to determine the value of things and decide what deserve to be preserved for the future. Certainly I am using my own ideology and assumptions to complete this task, but the process makes me question the criteria we are using to preserve information, history for the future, on a broader scale.
My initial thought is that I wanted to choose pieces that are purely generated by musical instruments to avoid the complexity of adding a layer of lyrics to the melody. Since the diversity of human languages and voices has been captured in the “Greetings From Earth” (which I acknowledge is just a very small representation of the nearly 7,000 languages and dialects that exist on earth), it is okay to select music pieces without human voice. I hope in this way, the emotions and messages conveyed in the pure melody could be easier understood by the other spacefarers. Then I tried to be, as Carl Sagan intended from the podcast, “as inclusive as possible”, and include music originated from different cultural group geographically. That is how this list was curated.
References
Brown University. (2017, July 11). Abby Smith Rumsey: “Digital memory: What can we afford to lose?”. YouTube. Retrieved July 9, 2022, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBrahqg9ZMc&t=671s
NASA. (n.d.). Voyager – music on the Golden Record. NASA. Retrieved July 9, 2022, from https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/golden-record/whats-on-the-record/music/
Hi Trista!
I especially enjoyed your post, because it looks like we had similar considerations (i.e., Smith’s caution that we don’t know what the audience would value, and in turn we would have to make assumptions) but went in opposite directions with our choices. You chose the ones created with musical instruments only, whereas I chose the ones with voices — and after reading your rationale, I can definitely agree with your decision as well.
Your post expanded my thinking, and our different choices reminds me of our readings from week 6 around the idea that our individual interpretations depend on context and experiences!
Hey Trista,
I too had a really tough time with this assignment. I wasn’t very familiar with many of the songs and almost felt overwhelmed in selecting which pieces to use. At first I also took the approach of not including lyrics for the same reason you did. Who am I to assume that these extraterrestrials can even speak? But then I realized that there were still far too many songs to narrow it down to 10. So, just like you, I tried to include pieces from around the world in the spirit of being inclusive and continuing that “message of peace” that Ferris (2019) discussed in the podcast. Interestingly enough, though we took similar approaches, we only ended up with 4 songs that were the same.
Hi Trista,
I struggled with this assignment as well. I went the opposite route to you: I picked songs that I contained human voices to provide exposure to different pitches, dialects and languages. I like that you acknowledged that this is an incredibly small sample of human sounds; just as the instrumental choices were an incredibly small selection of musical sounds.