Below are the 10 songs I chose to keep for this task:
| Country of Origin | Composition | Artist(s) | Length |
|---|---|---|---|
| Peru | Wedding Song | recorded by John Cohen | 0:38 |
| United States | Navajo Indians, Night Chant | recorded by Willard Rhodes | 0:57 |
| Senegal | percussion | recorded by Charles Duvelle | 2:08 |
| United States | “Johnny B. Goode” | written and performed by Chuck Berry | 2:38 |
| Austria | Mozart, The Magic Flute, Queen of the Night aria, no. 14 | Edda Moser, soprano. Bavarian State Opera, Munich, Wolfgang Sawallisch, conductor | 2:55 |
| India | raga, “Jaat Kahan Ho” | sung by Surshri Kesar Bai Kerkar | 3:30 |
| Germany | Bach, Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 in F. First Movement | Munich Bach Orchestra, Karl Richter, conductor | 4:40 |
| Java | court gamelan, “Kinds of Flowers” | recorded by Robert Brown | 4:43 |
| Bulgaria | “Izlel je Delyo Hagdutin” | sung by Valya Balkanska | 4:59 |
| China | ch’in, “Flowing Streams” | performed by Kuan P’ing-hu | 7:37 |
Reflection
I wanted to choose a variety of songs to preserve the original intent of the golden record. Some major considerations I had when determining my opinion of “variety” were: country of origin, length, genre, and if the song was instrumental or vocal. This list contains both short and long songs (in fact, it keeps both the shortest and longest track on the record!), represents each continent of the world, and has a mix of vocal and instrumental tracks. Overall, I also tried to include songs that differed from each other tonally, as I felt that would have the strongest impact.
References
Music from Earth. (n.d.). NASA.
Taylor, D. (Host). (2019, April). Voyager golden record [Audio podcast episode]. In Twenty thousand hertz. Defacto Sound.