Against cultural indifference: for the dignity of those who create

My music is being released this week on all platforms except Spotify, as a wake-up call—not only in response to everything we’ve been learning about the financing of military technology, using money that never reaches all those creators whose work their business model feeds on and exploits, but also as a reminder to all the people who say they love music without taking responsibility for how they consume it, nor showing awareness of the rights and freedoms of the creators who dedicate their lives to making the world a kinder place amid all the difficulties and challenges we are facing, individually and collectively, across the planet.

It is also a call directed at artists themselves, encouraging them to learn to respect themselves and to reflect on the boundaries that, as a collective, we still resist establishing due to inconsistency—an inconsistency inherited from a tradition of dependence and a lack of autonomy, both professionally and personally. This is something that conservatories and higher education institutions visibly fail to address with the clarity it requires.

It is also a call to cultural managers who buy into the idea that the way forward is to sell yourself in exchange for nothing, or to launch into a system where you become just another cog in the machinery, without questioning what sustainability and developmental management really mean for an industry that should be asking itself what it wants to be—beyond commercial interests—if it truly wants to care for what we genuinely love and call Culture.

At times, embracing a narrative without questioning it—whether by promoters or cultural managers—simply exposes how far the sector still has to go toward true professionalization, in all its layers, diversities, and complementary disciplines that are essential.

Being able to press keys is not enough; the sector has delayed its own professionalization for far too long—decades—and now it must either face the consequences or rebuild coherently. There is a lack of capacity in the sector to assume leadership and to make the world of business an ally, not an executioner, but a friend.