Golden Record – Curated down to 10
- Zaire, Pygmy girls’ initiation song, recorded by Colin Turnbull.
- Australia, Aborigine songs, “Morning Star” and “Devil Bird,” recorded by Sandra LeBrun Holmes.
- New Guinea, men’s house song, recorded by Robert MacLennan.
- Peru, panpipes and drum, collected by Casa de la Cultura, Lima.
- Azerbaijan S.S.R., bagpipes, recorded by Radio Moscow.
- Navajo Indians, Night Chant, recorded by Willard Rhodes.
- Solomon Islands, panpipes, collected by the Solomon Islands Broadcasting Service.
- China, ch’in, “Flowing Streams,” performed by Kuan P’ing-hu.
- India, raga, “Jaat Kahan Ho,” sung by Surshri Kesar Bai Kerkar.
- Beethoven, String Quartet No. 13 in B flat, Opus 130, Cavatina, performed by Budapest String Quartet.
In no particular order, this list represents as broad a cross-section of culture and geography as I believe can be extracted from the list. I went this route because I do not necessarily see the Golden Record as a message to other possible civilizations, but rather as a memorial of our own. I say this not because I do not believe that there is sentient life in the universe, but because, considering the vastness of the universe, it seems highly unlikely that the Golden Record will ever be found, much less decoded by others. I also have reservations about the presumptions (duly noted in the podcast) inherent in the medium regarding the biology and sensing organs of any potential recipient. To me, the Golden Record is more a self-conscious recognition that earth will one day cease to exists, and likely all humanity (and all earth bound archives) with it. Fundamentally I see the Golden Record as the nearest possible representation of a permanent archive – barring catastrophic failure of the craft. Despite the noted attempt by the original curators to be ‘multi-cultural’, I felt there was a significant Euro-centric bias in the music selections. My list, therefore, seeks to correct that.