WHAT BECAME OF THE INSTRUMENTS OF THE OLD MASTERS?

I think about this sometimes. We hear names like (among so many others, the list would be immense) Blind Lemon Jefferson, Doc Boggs, Stringbean, people from the beginning of the last century, and the music reaches us alive, pulsating. But what about their instruments? Where is Blind Lemon Jefferson's guitar? Where did Doc Boggs' banjo go? Who ended up with all that?

The most likely answer isn't romantic. Many of these instruments simply disappeared. They were tools of the trade for musicians with limited resources, used to their limits. Wood that cracked, neck that warped, string that no longer held. There came a point when it was impossible to continue and the instrument became scrap, firewood, or was abandoned. Others may have passed from hand to hand, without any record. A relative kept it, then sold it, then someone traded it for something. And that's it, the history was lost. Today, an old guitar might exist somewhere in the world that was once in the hands of one of these guys, but nobody has any idea.

There's also the harsher factor: at the time, many of them weren't seen as important. There was no concept of preservation. Nobody thought that instrument would one day have historical value. It was just another musician, another object. A few escaped this fate. Instruments of musicians who were recognized in their lifetime or rediscovered later ended up in museums or collections. But that's the exception. What really remained was the sound. The way of playing, the phrasing, the intention. The wood may have turned to dust, but the language has transcended time.

Perhaps there's something beautiful in that. The instrument was just the means. The music was what truly mattered.

HOW MUSICIANS CAN SELL MERCH ONLINE FOR FREE (STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE) ON TEEPUBLIC

Do you want to have a complete store to sell your designs on your site (t-shirts and other products), for free and with plenty of features? Here’s my choice:





I’ve been using TeePublic since the dial-up days. It has an excellent reputation, and the platform is robust, a true synonym for POD on the internet. It’s very easy to use, offers quality products, and provides several customization options. I receive my earnings from sales easily through PayPal. It’s a safe environment for both sellers and buyers.

Here’s how to sell your products on your site (I recommend doing this on a computer). The suggestion here is to create direct navigation to each kind of product instead of sending users to the storefront (almost a deep link):

(1) Create your store and storefront. With just two designs, you can already start building something solid. Here is a tutorial on Youtube.

(2) In your site editor (I use Google Sites):

(a) Create your MERCH page (or any name you prefer) and list the items you choose.

(b) Try copying the menu (without the links - just plain text) from this page and pasting it into your page. You will need to insert your own store URLs for each subcategory.



(3) To get the URLs, go to your TeePublic store and follow the steps below. Use the left menu for categories and the right menu for subcategories. Right-click on the items to copy the URLs and paste them into your site editor. You can also share the links across other promotion channels, such as social media, emails, and messaging apps.

Done! You now have a page on your site with your POD store running 24/7/365, hosted on a highly stable platform. Just keep creating new designs and growing your storefront. With another email accounts, you can also create multiple stores if you want.

BETWEEN MUSICAL NOTES AND ALGORITHMS: WHAT IS STILL HUMAN IN THE MUSIC OF THE AI AGE?

AI-generated music is provoking one of the most intense discussions I've ever seen in the music world. I perfectly understand the feeling of many musicians, because I've been there myself. At first, the feeling was one of threat. Something new appearing and confusing everything we've spent years building. Over time, I decided to experiment. I opened an account on Suno AI and started generating some pieces, not for my work as Alex Cebe, but for other contexts. This changed my perception. It didn't eliminate the doubts, but it brought nuances.

One of the most common criticisms is that AI-generated music is stolen from other musicians. This is a delicate point and there are still ongoing legal issues. But I also ask a simple question. Since when has music not been based on music?

If we go back in time, we will see that entire genres were built on repetition, variation, and tradition. Structures, phrases, and ideas have circulated for decades. Artists have worked within existing languages, recreating and evolving them. No one creates from absolute zero. All music carries a past.

At the same time, it's important to consider that there's a difference between human influence and AI training. The musician listens, forgets, blends it with their own life. AI learns from large volumes of data. This raises real ethical questions, especially regarding subscriptions and payments. Ignoring this doesn't help the debate.

But there's another side that really catches my attention and that few people discuss calmly: the role of the listener.

What's wrong with someone who isn't a musician creating a song and liking what they created? If it generates a genuine moment, if a person connects, if the listener has a good time, if it accompanies a piece of their life, that has value. Music has always been about that too. Not just about technique or authorship, but about experience.

In a way, AI broadens access to creation. Just as the internet freed artists from record labels, now music production tools are freeing the listener from a passive position. Platforms like YouTube and Spotify had already changed consumption. Now we are selling a change in the very act of creation, and this doesn't mean the end of musicians. Quite the contrary. The music market will not disappear. Instruments will continue to be manufactured and purchased. Live shows will continue to exist. Music schools and teachers will continue to train people. None of this depends exclusively on how music is generated.

A live show delivers something that no AI can deliver: presence, risk, exchange, energy. An instrument is not just a production tool; it's a form of personal expression. Learning music is not just about reaching a final result; it's about developing listening skills, sensitivity, and language.

Where AI truly impacts is on another level: large-scale production, fast tracks, functional music. In this territory, the efficiency is astounding, and the changes are already happening. According to recent reports from the streaming and music technology market, the use of AI tools in audio creation has grown rapidly in the last two years, with millions of tracks being generated monthly. At the same time, the consumption of live music continues to rise globally, with record-breaking box office numbers post-pandemic and an increased demand for in-person experiences. These two movements are not mutually exclusive. They coexist.

Perhaps the most important question is not whether AI is right or wrong, but what becomes valuable now. It may be that value becomes increasingly easier to automate. Context, story, intention, presence. It may be that a new type of artist emerges, one who doesn't reject technology but also doesn't abandon their own identity.

In my case, I've found a path that makes sense to me. I use AI in some specific contexts and in other projects, but I preserve what I consider essential in my own work. I don't see them as replacements. See them as tools.

Music has always changed. We've always incorporated new technologies. It has always generated resistance. And I've always found a way to stay alive. Perhaps this is just another one of those moments.

Ultimately, after all this discussion, perhaps there's an interesting irony here. AI-generated music, instead of diminishing, has ended up greatly enhancing the value of music that isn't AI-generated. Because the easier it becomes to create music, the more evident what is rare becomes. Presence, intention, history, and identity begin to weigh more heavily. And that's precisely where music made by people remains irreplaceable.

THE MUSICIAN'S MANIFESTO

I found this image on my Google Drive today. I uploaded it in 2014. Unfortunately, the Musicians Guide (UK) site no longer exists.

PLAYING FOR THE POST OR PLAYING FOR THE MUSIC?

There is a strange feeling in the air when I observe the behavior of many musicians today. It is not a lack of talent, nor of technique. On the contrary, there has never been so many people playing so well. But something feels out of place, as if the starting point of creation has been inverted.

Music, which once came from an internal necessity, from an almost inevitable impulse to express, now often emerges with a destination already defined. The stage is no longer the center. The moment is no longer the focus. The experience has been replaced by the showcase.

Instead of playing because something needs to be said, many end up playing because something needs to be shown.

I say this also from personal experience. I have been in that place. There was a time when I composed with a certain urgency to post as quickly as possible. Creation came with a quiet anxiety, as if it were only complete after being published. Today I can see more clearly how much this interfered with the process. That is why I now observe myself carefully, so I do not repeat this mistake from the past.

Social media has brought real opportunities, that is undeniable. It has democratized access, allowed independent artists to find an audience, and broken barriers that once felt almost insurmountable. But along with that, it introduced a silent logic that gradually shapes behavior without us even noticing.

The logic of constant performance. The logic of immediate approval. The logic of content. And that is where music begins to be at risk.

When creation starts being guided by the expectation of engagement, something gets lost along the way. The time of music is not the time of the algorithm. Music needs repetition, mistakes, silence, and maturation. It even needs moments where nothing happens. The digital environment, on the other hand, demands constant novelty, quick impact, and instant attention.

This creates a subtle distortion. The musician starts thinking less about sound and more about format. Less about depth and more about duration. Less about feeling and more about how it will be perceived on someone’s screen.

The result is that many performances begin to sound like demonstrations. Small fragments of skill, arranged to impress. But not always to say something. And perhaps the most concerning part is not this in itself, but the fact that, over time, this logic can contaminate the creative process. The musician starts playing already thinking about the recording. Starts composing already thinking about the cut. Starts feeling already thinking about the reaction.

When that happens, music stops being an end and becomes a means.

But there is still a way back, and it is simpler than it seems. It lies in reclaiming moments when no one is watching. Moments when the sound does not need to be recorded. Moments when playing has no purpose other than the act itself.

Because, in the end, music does not need witnesses to exist. And perhaps it is precisely in this invisible space, far from any screen, that it begins to breathe again.

SILENT IN A FOLDER FOR ALMOST 20 YEARS

I found an old recording lost in my MediaFire, the kind you don’t even remember existed anymore. It felt like opening a time capsule, hearing raw versions, ideas still taking shape, mistakes and successes that now tell a different story. There’s something special about these old recordings, a kind of feeling that feels unique to that time.

A harsh sonic landscape where an acoustic guitar, plugged in and pushed beyond its natural limits, becomes something fractured and unrecognizable. The sound scrapes and tears like rusted barbed wire stretched across a dying world, each vibration carrying tension, abrasion, and unease. Nothing is clean. Nothing resolves.

Lo-fi textures crackle like pollution in the air, layers of noise building into a suffocating atmosphere. Frequencies collide and distort, evoking collapsing structures, toxic skies, and the slow decay of everything once alive. The guitar no longer sings, it resists, groans, and fractures under pressure.

This is not melody, but impact. A raw, confrontational piece that mirrors environmental destruction in sound form, where every hiss, buzz, and broken resonance feels like a scar left on a poisoned landscape.

GO VEGAN TV

This video features a single static image, and the music is the way I express the sadness I feel about the suffering of animals. I used to play this piece on the streets of São Paulo, and its original title is “O Vento,” (translated to en-us: The Wind) composed in 2020. I also have a composition from 2006 titled “The Wind,” which is unrelated to this one.

There is a silence that is not the absence of sound, but an excess of pain. It lives in those eyes. Eyes that do not speak our language, yet say everything we avoid hearing. Each of them carries an entire world of sensation, of waiting, of restrained fear, and of a kind of resignation that should not exist in any living being.

What we see here are not just fragments of faces, but portals. Small windows opened into consciousnesses that feel the wind, the cold, the loneliness, and above all, the lack of freedom. There is something spiritual in this, because it is not only about imprisoned bodies, but about lives that continue to perceive, to register, to exist despite everything. There is a flame there, silent, that does not go out, even when everything around tries to reduce it to an object.

The gaze of an animal does not accuse as a human’s does. It does not judge, does not form speeches, does not organize ideologies. It simply is. And perhaps that is why it hurts more. Because in front of it, there is no negotiation. There is no argument that dissolves what is there: the evidence of a pain that did not ask to be born, but was imposed. A pain that crosses time like a constant wind, invisible, yet always present.

That wind, which was transformed into music, seems to pass through each of those eyes. It finds no resistance, because it has already taken almost everything. Even so, something remains. A kind of essential presence, almost sacred, that resists being forgotten. As if each being were saying, in silence, that its life is not a detail of the world, but part of it—inseparable, worthy of being recognized. There is a deep melancholy in all of this, but it is not an empty melancholy. It is a melancholy that calls for awareness. That invites us to feel instead of turning away. That whispers that compassion is not a distant ideal, but a concrete choice, made in the most everyday actions.

Perhaps what weighs most is not only the suffering itself, but the distance we create so we do not have to see it. And yet, those eyes cross that distance. They reach us somehow, like echoes. Like long notes sustained in the air, like your music, which does not resolve, does not conclude, but simply remains.

And in that remaining, something begins to change. Because when we finally hold the gaze of those who suffer, without turning away, without justifying, there is an encounter. And every true encounter has something spiritual about it. It is there, in that silent space between one being and another, that the possibility of change is born.

The wind continues. But perhaps, if we truly listen to it, it will cease to be only a lament and become a call as well. The animals are divine beings, were created to be contemplated and must be protected.

☛ youtube.com/@GoVeganTV

THE INVISIBLE VALUE OF ENTERTAINMENT

Entertainment has a value that many people underestimate. At first glance, it may seem like mere distraction, something light, fleeting, almost superficial. But in practice, it plays a deep role in human life.

It is through entertainment that we often find relief from the weight of everyday life. After hours of work, worries, and responsibilities, it is music, a film, a series, a game, a dance performance, a theater play, a live show, a circus act, or even a moment of humor that helps reset the mind. It is not empty escape, it is breathing space. It is a way to maintain emotional balance. Beyond that, entertainment is also culture. It carries stories, values, critiques, and worldviews. Dance expresses what words cannot reach. Theater gives form to human emotions. Cinema captures moments in time and transforms narratives into experience. Literature builds entire worlds within the reader. Even something simple can spark reflection, memory, or inspiration.

There is also an invisible value: entertainment connects people. Whether at a festival, among friends, at a performance, in a group activity, or even by sharing something online, it creates common ground. It brings people closer.

There is also creative value. Entertainment inspires both those who create and those who consume. One musician influences another, one actor inspires a new interpretation, one dancer awakens movement in those who watch. It is a living cycle that feeds itself. And perhaps the most important point is this: entertainment reminds us that life is not only about producing, paying bills, and fulfilling obligations. There is beauty, expression, and pleasure along the way. Ignoring this turns life into something overly mechanical.

Entertainment is not the opposite of seriousness. It is an essential part of a healthy, creative, and human life.

WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A MUSICIAN AND A PIZZA?

 "What's the difference between a musician and a pizza? A pizza can feed a family of four."

The joke is kind of funny. But it doesn’t match reality. Music is a business like any other. A billion-dollar market, competitive, often brutal, and extremely difficult. But it’s also a market where many people make a living and live very well.

Yes, there are musicians swimming in money. Living comfortably, building wealth, creating solid and profitable careers. They’re not rare, and it’s not an exception. It’s part of the system itself.

The problem is that, because of jokes like this, a certain prejudice against the profession has been created. As if it were inevitably synonymous with failure. And because of that, many talented people may have believed it. They may have stepped back, given up, or never even tried. Talents that perhaps never got to develop because they bought into that idea.

Is it difficult? Very. It’s a tough, uncertain, and demanding path. But there’s also money, market, and opportunity. Music is not charity. It’s work. And for those who understand the game and stay in it, it can be extremely profitable.

♬ ♩♩♩♩ ♬ ♬

A moment to share (2019): once I was invited to play at a small gathering of friends in a bar on a Saturday afternoon. The bar was closed for a birthday celebration. I think there were about 15 people, and when I arrived, everyone had already been drinking and was quite lively. While I was tuning my instrument (resonator), I overheard a woman saying to someone, “a musician is an engineer who didn’t make it”, fully aware that I could hear her. I found it very disrespectful.

Anyway, I played the entire setlist. It turned out to be a nice event, and people were very receptive.