The 10 pieces of music that I chose for this assignment are:
- Tchenhoukoumen Percussion – Senegal
- Morning Star and Devil Bird – Australia
- Cranes in their nest – Japan
- Melancholy Blues (Louis Armstrong) – US
- Beethoven’s 5th Symphony – Austria
- Navajo Night Chant – US
- Melanesian Panpipes – Soloman Islands
- Wedding Song – Peru
- Flowing Streams – China
- Jaat Kahan Ho – India
I have played in community concert bands and sung in choirs. I also have been involved with musical theatre, so this assignment was quite a pleasure for me. The selection of these pieces was based upon the intent of representing as much of Earth’s cultural diversity as possible. I quite enjoy listening and learning about the music of other cultures and countries, especially when they use instruments that are unfamiliar to me. Music is a strong part of cultural identity, it has been used for recording history, sending messages, and for entertainment.
While listening to the podcast and going through the original 27 pieces, one thing that I noticed was the strong representation of music from Europe and North American (US). Out of the 27, there were six selections from European classical artists (3 alone from Bach, and 1 each from Beethovan, Mozart, and Stravinsky). While the podcast mentioned the reasoning behind the selections (mathematically significant, representative of human values), I wanted to make sure that the 10 that I selected were more diverse and representative of the different cultures, instrumentations, and vocalizations/choral elements through the earth. I do have to admit that the selection of Louis Armstrong was somewhat of a personal bias because I like Jazz. It is interesting that even though the cultures may be quite different, there are similar elements in some of the songs. For example, I noticed that the ‘Flowing Streams’ track from China had some similar sounds to the guitar in ‘Dark was the night’. The Peruvian pan-pipes seem similar to the flute played in the Cranes piece from Japan (although the type of song is quite different).
The difficulty with an exercise like this is that the selection of these songs is time-based meaning that if an extra-terrestrial species were to encounter this record, it would be a snapshot of Earth’s history, not necessarily representative of the current cultures and identities. If that species were to form an image of Earth based on that record, the cultures and people that they would find here so many years later could be quite different. Music is ever changing and evolving, just as humanity itself.
Hi Marlis,
Thank you for your post I appreciate your musical background how you really focused on Earth’s cultural diversity. I also appreciate how you took into account the strong representation of music from Europe and North American, I did not notice this as I was more overwhelmed with the number of tracks to get through so I am grateful how you choose your songs with a more diverse representation of the different cultures, instrumentations, and vocalizations/choral elements through the earth as the world is a big place. I am interested to know what were you thinking in how the songs represent Earth? I know you wanted cultural diversity but what else about the music had you saying yup that is how Earth should be represented.
Hi Melissa, apologies for the late reply, I’m doing a bit of catch-up now.
To answer your question, when I made my choices, I wasn’t thinking of representing ‘earth’ so much as representing ‘humanity’ and the human species. This is why I was so intent upon choosing music from a wide variety of cultures and genres. That being said, there is so much more to this planet than just the human species, and I’m not sure if music can adequately represent the diversity of life and landscapes. One could say that including the sounds of various animals might also help to represent earth, but then one must also pick which are the best animals to represent, and what about those who are silent? What are the sounds of plants? How can they be represented in a musical score? Concrete definition and description of this planet is difficult and subject to a wide interpretation.