The title preceding this writing was widely debated on November 10, 2025 in a Congress on Artificial Intelligence held in the Granada Conference CenterUnder this title, the DJ and producer come together MPV Music and this writer, sponsored by the tenor José Manuel Zapata, who acted as moderator.
Even understanding the position that MPV Music put forward there, insofar as it is certainly true that for years now music, in any of its manifestations, has inevitably gone through technological mediation, we cannot ignore that behind every software, every synthesizer or every composition program, there is a human intelligence that selects, decides, interprets and feels what it does.
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Now, if we talk about the duendeIt requires a great deal of tact. Duende is not a universalizable aesthetic category, not a synonym for emotion or artistic transmission, but a profoundly idiosyncratic term, born from the world of flamenco, from the historical and bodily feeling of a people who made singing a form of survival. El duende, such as the nostalgia Portuguese or the blues feeling African American, cannot be dissolved into algorithmsLet's see why.
El duendeIn its Lorca-esque sense, it constitutes one of the most radical manifestations of aesthetic experience. It is not merely an artistic category, but an ontological presence, a form of truth that springs from the body and soul of the performer. Its root is corporeal, which was the thesis we defended at the congress, because it requires a phenomenological experience of pleasure and displeasure, of joy and heartbreak...from the wound that time leaves on bodies. The duende is experienced in both directions: in the one who produces it and in the one who receives gifts of musical information. engoblin.
From this perspective, the possibility of an artificial intelligence generating a work with duende This presents us with an unavoidable paradox. However sophisticated its algorithm, the machine lacks an experience of the world. It does not possess a phenomenology of feeling. It does not suffer, love, fear, or age. Its relationship with language, sound, or the visual is devoid of interiority, of empirical intentionality. It can simulate the form of art, mimic, in the Aristotelian sense, human actions, but That doesn't mean that he feels, that he suffers, or that what he presents is true..
El duendeOn the contrary, it demands a memory of affection, a sedimentation of experiences that converge in a moment of expressive truth. When a flamenco singer breaks the silence with a ayHe is not executing a technique but transcending his own limits, opening himself up to the ineffable nature of his emotions. At least, that's how it was conceived. cante in its origins. That openness, That gap that connects the human with the tragic is precisely what the machine cannot experience..
Therefore, extrapolating the duende The realm of artificial intelligence presents a contradiction in terms, an aesthetic and ontological aporia. The machine can produce melodies of impeccable formal beauty, even moving to the human ear, but it will always do so from simulation, not from lived experience. Its own will be a mirror emotion, a projection of our desire onto an entity without consciousness.
"The possibility of artificial intelligence creating a work with soul presents us with an unavoidable paradox. However sophisticated its algorithm, the machine lacks an experience of the world. It does not possess a phenomenology of feeling. It does not suffer, it does not love, it does not fear, it does not age."
In short, if artificial intelligence were ever to reach a level of sophistication that would allow it to approach the protein essence of duendewe could no longer properly speak of duendeBecause This term is inextricably linked to the embodied condition of the human being, to the sensitive and spiritual materiality of the singing body.who suffers, who loves. In this case, it would be possible to invent a new concept, a neologism that names that other type of posthuman expression, that simulated aesthetic, different in nature and origin.
Therefore, it is not a matter of denying the emotion of that which emanates from AI —which, incidentally, isn't far removed from certain contemporary musical creations—for some will be moved, as I was when MPV Music used AI to incorporate our voices and one of our tracks, creating something entirely new. Our aim, rather, is to open the debate, starting from the fact that, while each musical form possesses its own expressive ontology, its own way of being in the world, its own cultural and emotional roots, The goblin belongs, by its very nature, to the experience of cante flamenco, to that physicality of the tearing that arises from its expressive power.
If we extend the concept of duende To any sound manifestation that evokes emotion, we run the risk of falling into a kind of aesthetic allologyThe "anything goes" mentality, a dissolution of meanings that ends up emptying words and concepts of their sense, would be doing a disservice not only to flamencobut also to other musics, which lose their specificity, their unique character, their genealogy.
Therefore, there is a soul behind a machine, but it caters to the human soul of the one who operates it, not to the device. And of course there's excitement in disco music, but not duende, just as there is no nostalgia in a bulería. Each emotion belongs to its own territory, and defending that difference is not closing oneself off from the world, but honoring the diversity of ways of feeling.
Technology, like all cultural mediation, is not in itself a threat, but a tool at our disposal. What remains crucial—or should be— the human gaze that guides it, the aesthetic and ethical intention that underlies its useIn sensitive hands, digital tools can generate a distinct artistic status, a new sonic configuration that will undoubtedly end up being what mainstream of our era.
However, this realization does not imply abandoning criticism or a reflective approach. From within this process of transformation, we must continue working to construct a counter-hegemonic narrative that champions a different ethic of listening, a different aesthetic, and different poetic and cultural values that prioritize depth over superficiality, attention over noise, and humanity over simulation.
Ultimately, it's not about denying technology, but about humanizing it, about inscribing it in a creative praxis that Continue to champion difference, cultural democracy, and alternative approaches.And that's it, my answer is no. No, not a goblin. What do you think? The debate is open.
Text: Juan Pinilla
