Tom Young wrote:Didja know?: A 1927 recording by Blind Willie Johnson of Dark Was the Night, Cold was the Ground was launched into space as part of the Voyager mission.
I was talking to someone about this the other day when the song popped up on the playlist we were listening to and was glad to see your post.
It occurs to me that some may miss the wonder in this story, so I wanted to take a moment to share why it's meaningful to me.
Note: 90% is from other authors, and my 10% is mostly editing and summary.
Blind Willie Johnson's song, "Dark Was the Night (Cold Was the Ground)" is currently hurtling through space at 38,026.77mph, having travelled more than 13.486 billion miles in 41 years. In 2012, after crossing the heliopause, it became the first blues song to reach leave our solar system and reach interstellar space.
The Voyager "Sounds of Earth" record is an analogue disc record containing sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth, attached to the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 spacecraft.
When the Voyager I and II spacecrafts launched in 1977 to explore the outer Solar System both carried identical messages to any form of life that might be encountered. The message was contained on a phonograph record--a 12-inch gold-plated copper disk containing a variety of images, natural sounds, spoken greetings in multiple languages and an eclectic 90-minute musical program that includes Blind Willie Johnson's "Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground".
"Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground" is 3 minutes and 21 seconds of Johnson's unique guitar playing in open D tuning. By most accounts, Johnson substituted a knife or penknife for the bottleneck.
The song's title is borrowed from a hymn that was popular in the nineteenth century American South with fasola singers. “Gethsemaneâ€, written by English clergyman Thomas Haweis in 1792, begins with the lines “Dark was the night, cold was the ground / on which my Lord was laid.â€
Francis Davis, author of The History of the Blues wrote, "In terms of its intensity alone—its spiritual ache—there is nothing else from the period to compare to Johnson's 'Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground', on which his guitar takes the part of a preacher and his wordless voice the part of a rapt congregation."
His melancholy, gravel-throated humming of the guitar part creates the impression of "unison moaning", a melodic style common in Baptist churches where, instead of harmonizing, a choir hums or sings the same vocal part, albeit with slight variations among its members. Although Johnson's vocals are indiscernible, several sources indicate the subject of the song is the crucifixion of Christ.
Professor Timothy Ferris, who produced the Voyager Golden Record, said of picking the songs, "We had a group of us working on the record. We reached out to all sorts of people: musicologists, field recordists like Alan Lomax, scholars of music - our main concern being to cast a wide net and have music from all over the world. Our two criteria, from the beginning and at the end, were to make it a world record, to make it universal as we could, and to make it a good record."
Each record is encased in a protective aluminum jacket, together with a cartridge and a needle. Instructions, in symbolic language, explain the origin of the spacecraft and indicate how the record is to be played.
The Golden Record also contains an introductory statement from then US president Jimmy Carter, who summarizes some of the aspirations of the scientists who assembled the first galactic mix tape:
"We cast this message into the cosmos. It is likely to survive a billion years into our future, when our civilization is profoundly altered and the surface of the Earth may be vastly changed. Of the 200 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy, some – perhaps many – may have inhabited planets and spacefaring civilizations. If one such civilization intercepts Voyager and can understand these recorded contents, here is our message:
This is a present from a small distant world, a token of our sounds, our science, our images, our music, our thoughts, and our feelings. We are attempting to survive our time so we may live into yours. We hope someday, having solved the problems we face, to join a community of galactic civilizations. This record represents our hope and our determination, and our good will in a vast and awesome universe."
It will be forty thousand years before they make a close approach to any other planetary system. As Carl Sagan has noted, "The spacecraft will be encountered and the record played only if there are advanced spacefaring civilizations in interstellar space. But the launching of this bottle into the cosmic ocean says something very hopeful about life on this planet."
“Dark Was the Night†is a song that can move mountains, and has inspired nearly every blues and rock artist since. Jack White called it “the greatest example of slide guitar ever recorded.†Ry Cooder described it as “the most soulful, transcendent piece in all American music.†It was included on the Voyager Golden Record, explained producer Timothy Ferris, because "Johnson's song concerns a situation he faced many times: nightfall with no place to sleep. Since humans appeared on Earth, the shroud of night has yet to fall without touching a man or woman in the same plight."
It’s a morsel of music heritage so precious and momentous and true that it was picked to represent humanity on Earth. If some intelligent life form ever comes across that album, they too are going to understand the same truth embodied by the blues: that along with all the beauty and brightness of the human experience, there also exists a darkness as inescapable as the night.
There's something about this song that moves me to tears for reasons I haven't begun to understand. Maybe it has something to do with the contrast between the cold loneliness of the Voyager journeys and the outburst of Willie Johnson's soul as he wails out for something that can't be conveyed in words...
