My first addition to the golden record project is Robert Johnson’s Cross Road Blues. It is a low-fidelity recording from 1936 of Johnson singing and playing slide guitar. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yd60nI4sa9A 

I wanted to include some blues because it’s a cross-continental genre that went on to define a great deal of other music. This music is played on guitar, a European instrument, but incorporates rhythmic and melodic elements from west African traditions. The blues imprinted itself on the DNA of popular music, a genre which would take over the world, even to the point of replacing local musical cultures. I chose Robert Johnson because I think he communicates the spirit of the blues more viscerally than anybody else.

 

My second is a compilation of recordings of street sounds from Hanoi, Vietnam. Pedestrians can be heard conversing in Vietnamese, horns sound from different angles, and under it all, the thrum of scooters. https://youtu.be/CSmBzj0ornw?t=63 

The sound of a city is something like the sound of our species, and I think an extra-terrestrial could understand a lot about humans from it. An extraterrestrial could intuit from the constant sound of vehicles that humans spend much of their time in noisy environments (or perhaps they themselves come from even noisier planets, in which case they will learn that we live in quiet environments). Hearing speech babbling quiet in the background might help them understand that we are a social species.

 

Saving best for last, I include Pete Seeger’s recording of “Solidarity Forever.” Verses consist entirely of Seeger singing and playing banjo, and a large chorus joins him to sing the song’s title in the chorus. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8eK9ZXf-Ow

I’m aware of the similarities between this recording and my first entry, but I wanted to include something that represented the spirit of human solidarity. At first I was going to include a clip of a devotional service, but in the end I chose the anthem of the American labour movement in order to embarrass Elon Musk for being an anti-union plutocrat. Though they likely wouldn’t be able to pick apart the lyrics, the sentiment of unity is so powerfully conveyed by the chorus that I think an extra-terrestrial intelligence might nevertheless gain understanding on a few of the most important themes of human history; kinship, struggle, belief, and optimism.