1. A compass to read the ‘Intro’

This project emerges from a curatorship with two complementary dimensions. The main flow belongs to what is usually called general culture and weaves the narrative of the year (in this case, 1950) through figures whose impact transcended their original field and entered the collective imagination.

They are authors, artists and thinkers whose work, like that of George Orwell or George Bernard Shaw, continues to echo across ages, because the ideas sustaining it do not easily grow old.

At the same time, a specialised archive of anniversaries of musicians and chess players is developed, refined through two of our most cherished passions.

Its purpose is to recognise and preserve trajectories that sometimes remain outside the canon, yet prove essential for understanding the diversity of artistic creation and technical thought. The existence of this space does not respond to a hierarchy of value but to a need for meaning.

Thus, the narrative flows and the archive breathes: while the visitor moves smoothly along the main path, the reader inclined towards music or chess finds secondary routes that may become central, places to pause, explore and go deeper.

I will never tire of saying that what follows is a personal selection with a deliberate bias: I prioritise what left its mark on South America, particularly in Uruguay and Argentina, whenever that mark resonates with my own cultural, historical or musical interests. At the same time, I include milestones of worldwide significance when they are unavoidable. Far from being an encyclopaedia of 1950 or a roll of commemorations, this project traces a personal path across the events and figures that gave the year its tone. I am drawn to what feels near, to what speaks directly, instead of feigning objectivity towards what remains remote.

The criterion is simple: relevance, legacy, innovation and beauty. Here coexist celebrated figures with others less known yet decisive. If a name comes up that doesn't ring a bell, take it as an invitation to discover it, like Claude Shannon, author of a seminal 1950 paper that laid the foundations of computer chess, or Jim Peterik, born in the same year and later one of the key voices of melodic rock and Album-Oriented Rock in the 1980s.

Music stands at the centre, though never alone. It intertwines with the threads sustaining this portal: chess, mathematics and the emerging field of computing, together with art, cinema, science, sport and certain episodes of geopolitics that defined their time.

The project will continue year after year guided by the same compass: a situated, rigorous and open gaze. Not everything is here, because not everything can be. What you find here is here for a reason; if that logic feels familiar, you are home.

2. Entering 1950

Think of the great musical milestones of the 20th century: 1950 is hardly the first year that springs to mind. Its music seems quiet, almost shy, with no single song that instantly mirrors the year, the way ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ does for 1975. Ask which tune defined that moment and even the experts might hesitate. Yet if we stop and listen more carefully, under that surface stillness we begin to catch the first hints of change.

This is not an academic study or a catalogue of curiosities. What I wish to share is a simple view of a modest year that, without fanfare, became woven into the fabric of musical history. If you are interested in understanding how music changes with its time, and how sometimes the most subtle shifts transform everything, then this personal voyage is for you.

Each year in this project should not be read as a sealed box. The title “1950” is less a rigid boundary than a guidepost, a page turned for clarity. History rarely obeys the neat cuts of the calendar; cultural processes are messy, overlapping, porous. That is why certain names appear here even though their glory belongs to another decade.

Take Agnetha Fältskog. Most remember her as the voice of ABBA in the seventies, but she also belongs to 1950: born in post-war Sweden, her early years are part of the fabric of this story. The same goes for one of the founding members and leaders of Genesis, Mike Rutherford, born just a few months later in England, sharing the atmosphere of that same generational threshold.

Both born in 1950, although their peaks belong to later decades, they show how this year planted seeds that would later bloom in the musical landscape.

A year is not just concerts, films or headlines: it is also the quieter threads of births, deaths, books, inventions and symbols that carry meaning forward.

One principle, however, remains strict: the playlist. Songs are anchored only to the year of their release, never by the date of recording or a later hit. Everything else flows across borders; only the tunes remain tied to the calendar.

Many recall the early 1950s as a period of peace and tranquillity, a precursor to the sonic storm that was imminent. I can see their point to some extent.

However, with the benefit of hindsight, 1950 reveals itself as a year of quiet transitions, not noisy headlines. Its value lies in that modest tone, in the faint murmur that signalled change.