Art by Mariana Crottollini (Argentina)
The music industry transformed into lords sitting on chairs made from musicians’ skins.
Por Guillermo Cides
There was a time when the emotion of chords created with our own hands surprised us in the solitude of our room. Like primitives who found in their soot-stained hands a precious element to paint on rock, we discovered fire in melodies that had something unique: they came from ourselves.
It was a time when people talked about muses, inspiration, and “having duende.” It was—above all—a breath of mystical self-esteem. To consider ourselves as capable, as empowered to shape with clay what we imagined. And then we organized melodies, gave them form and meaning, decided that all those cave paintings would mean something. We did it for posterity, to help those who came after, to leave in the universe the indelible mark of our existence.
But something began to happen. Supposed owners of mountains appeared, owners of lands and caves. People with company names who decided which sounds would remain and which would not. The music industry transformed into lords sitting on chairs made from musicians’ skins. And some musicians competed to give their skin in exchange for the usual. Those who refused had to hide in secret caves, making music inside the mountain and handing out black-and-white flyers for hidden, forbidden concerts. And while the giant record label grew, a revolution was brewing inside the mountain: the Internet. And the war was mythic. Hundreds of entrepreneurs fell as control passed into the hands of the insurgents, who had developed advanced P2P technology weapons. The music empire collapsed—a monumental crash that left live concerts as the only way to generate income.
Prosperous years followed, sharing and listening to the now public, now accessible music. Canceled musicians who suddenly appeared everywhere with new, real songs. But the monster had not died. Patient, hidden, and healing from its wounds, it created new control systems, new platforms that promised to tempt with the false idea of “being seen,” of “belonging.” And the musicians believed it, abandoned their ranks, and accepted the rules of the new algorithm. They used the monster’s technology to make automatic songs with a single goal: to grow the empire and give it more power, more money. And the media joined the empire, and the kingdom operated with all kinds of numbers: clicks, followers, exposure, percentages—an entire mechanical city illuminated by yellow artificial light. Composing was no longer a magical individual act of transcendence. Now, it was a military objective: to quickly and efficiently conquer the attention of a fleeting market based on momentary exposure, whose beneficiaries were the same old companies from before the revolution. And although musicians were warned, the monster no longer needed them: it now has its own musicians in the form of digitally programmed machines to emulate every possible trait of a composer. The empire has betrayed them, even if they don’t realize it. Or maybe they do, and still try to belong, clutching desperately to the cables of the machine—the same machine that will cut off the tubes feeding them when it no longer needs them.
Meanwhile, deep inside the mountain, a faint, dull melody is heard. It seems to be the voice of someone who has created a song. They are the children of the insurgents, preparing for a new revolution. It will be years before they are ready. They still have to learn. But like any saga, that day will come, and the power of “true humans” will emerge with a new, powerful weapon that no one yet imagines: that of lost art.
G.C.
