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Te doy miedo, ¿no?
I scare you, don't I ?
The days of "The Song" might be over. Or, to be more precise, the days of "the one version of the song" might be over.
Let's recall: since the invention of the industrial pop and rock music business in the 1950s and 1960s, it was all about "the new release." As an artist, you had to have an album out there at least every year and singles out there, let's say every three months. Your label would orchestrate the marketing around "the album" and a sequence of "the single." The song was the one quantity, packaged item of commerce in the music industry.
That whole setup is seriously challenged with the emergence of generic artificial AI systems. For several reasons:
1. The marginal costs of producing a tailored version of a song for a particular market are shrinking. Generative AI makes it possibel to localize a "A Song" into a manifold of genres, moods, markets, and tastes.
2. Generic AI music platforms are offering "Make your own cover version" directly to the consumer. If so inclined, the consumer may not even rely on the artist anymore. He or she may cut his own song version based on the AI libraries.
3. For the artist himself, it is a very tempting opportunity to explore the manifold of versions that a particular song idea may breed. And that is one of my artistic methods: I run a core song idea through several artificial intelligence systems. Picking different styles, different musical cultures, and cultural contexts. In this manifold of possibilities, you will discover interpretations that you never thought about. It is as if the AI system would unravel the unconscious web of ideas and associations any idea rests on.
Te doy miedo, ¿no? Ich mach Dir Angst, nicht wahr ? I scare you, don't I ?
This week's version places the original text in a Latin and more specific Mexican context. While I was working on the music, I was unsure of which way to turn: the more Spanish-influenced Mariachi tradition or the Caribbean Cumbia tradition. Both meet in Mexico. As it turns out, the rhythm of my version leans more to the Spanish flamenco tradition and not towards the polyrhythmic cumbia. So, I gave it some mariachi flavor, with the typical guitarrero as a cherry on top.
While working on this version, I noticed that my text itself has some association with the poetry of 20th-century Latin American surrealist/existential authors like César Vallejo (Peru, 1892–1938) and Pablo Neruda (Chile, 1904–1973). I have been a big Neruda fan since my student years. As often, I had long forgotten this connection, and the AI system reminded me of my unconscious borrowings.
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