AI and Caribbean Music​

Question 1

AI’s General definition (Duke University)

Answer 1

Definition and Scope of AI: AI involves using computers to perform tasks that typically require human intelligence. This includes seeing and processing visual information, understanding environments, moving within them, recognizing patterns, and understanding spoken language.​

AI and Human Intelligence: AI is a broad branch of computer science encompassing various technologies. While AI systems require large datasets to identify patterns, make predictions, and recommend actions, they still can’t fully compete with the human brain’s ability to handle a wide range of data and methods.

Question 2

Caribbean Music​

Answer 2

Sounds associated created by Caribbean people in their lived experiences​

Folk sounds (colonial and early post-colonial)​

Popular sounds (late colonial, early post-colonial, colonial)​

Question 3

Caribbean music in lived experience​

Answer 3

Carnivals, religious rituals, sound system culture (reggaeton, bajan dub/dancehall)…​

Popular music is based on indigenous folk (soca/calypso/son ​

Folk is based on creolization musical principles ​

Question 4

Caribbean music aesthetic​

Answer 4

Based on repetition​

Musematic/riff forms ​

Musematic repetition consists of short melodic material with high levels of patterning for example riffs (Middleton Studying Popular…260). ​

…in Afro-American-derived popular music, additive (open ended, repetitive) rhythmic processes are commonplace. (Middleton Studying Popular… 212) ​

Rhythmic patterning determines genre ​

Question 5

Rhythmic, Repetitive forms​

Answer 5

Highly patterned forms are ideal for AI processes​

Rap ​

Question 6

Will AI lead to the death of caribbean music?

Answer 6

Musician economies based on live performances​

Community is still key to Caribbean music​

Question 7

Afro-Caribbean aesthetic - signifyin​

Answer 7

Creativity is the ability to reconfigure the stock phrases​

Gates suggests other qualities of signifyin such as the importance of sound and timbre in the delivery of the text which can change the meaning of words. (50.)

Question 8

Conclusion ​

Answer 8

AI can copy rhythmic patterns but the creativity of the individual remains a quality that is uniquely Caribbean (for the time being)​