The AI-animated project also featuredJosé "Pepino" Ministeri, known in the world of murga as one of the most renowned directors of the genre.
Visually, the creators of the video clip reconstructed it based on Miucha: The Voice of Bossa Nova, a Brazilian documentary that focuses on singer Heloísa Maria Buarque de Hollanda, better known as "Miúcha," as a key figure in the development of the bossa nova genre.
In turn, the aesthetics of the music video were inspired by images of the Uruguayan capital from the 1900s to the 1920s, recovered from the Montevideo Photography Center.
The project was spearheaded by musician Alberto Magnone, who was also behind the original version of El murguista. He composed the music and wrote the lyrics together with Horacio Ferrer in 2014, while Pablo Routin was responsible for the performance.
The music video was directed by Camila Rodríguez, a graduate of the Bachelor's Degree in Design, Art, and Technology, in collaboration with Josefina Silbermann and Fiona Fernández, advanced students in the same program.
Julián Rügnitz, director of murga; Tabaré Leyton, tango and murga singer; and Jorge Cancela, sound designer, also participated in the video clip.
From an initial idea to a possible universe
The proposal came from Magnone, who already had a first version of Carlos Gardel's voice generated using artificial intelligence by an external studio.
Initially, his intention was for the singer to "appear" in the video clip with movement and stage presence, while the song played in voice-over.
In other words, it was not initially planned that Gardel would interpret the work in its entirety on a visual level as well, but rather that his participation would be mainly associated with a narrative presence within the story.
However, the members of the Cafijo art collective, whose name is a combination of Camila, Fiona, and Josefina, presented him with a range of possibilities using AI tools that they incorporated into their studies:
We told him that with these new artificial intelligence tools, we could recreate Gardel and make him sing. We showed him the progress we had made and the projects we had worked on; he liked what he saw and asked us to apply that technology to the music video.
After two months of intense work, the digital artists managed to reconstruct the video clip and set it in early 20th-century Montevideo, combining historical accuracy with artistic recreation.
The scene opens in a café in Montevideo, where Carlos Gardel runs into Pepino and the murga director invites him to Carnival.
The narrative moves forward with a change of scene, and suddenly Gardel appears, watching from a balcony as the Los Patos Cabreros murga performs at night, and he begins to sing, in an atmosphere that blends tango, popular tradition, and contemporary technology.
A creative process where the human element prevails
Although the project relies on artificial intelligence technologies , the filmmakers emphasize that the human component was decisive throughout the process. The idea, scriptwriting, scene planning, aesthetic definition, and casting were all decided before any technological tools were used.
One of the most complex challenges was recreating Pepino's dance. Given that the available historical records are scarce and of poor quality, the movement was interpreted and recorded in advance by Rügnitz.
Then, using motion transfer techniques (motion transfer), that recording was digitally applied to the AI-generated character. The final integration required multiple adjustments to achieve visual consistency and avoid an artificial effect.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EdATVGL4mo&list=RD-EdATVGL4mo&start_radio=1
The work was largely carried out remotely, with occasional instances of in-person coordination. Each member took on different scenes, while Rodríguez, as the project's general director, was responsible for maintaining a unified aesthetic.
Carlos Gardel as a Uruguayan icon of tango
For Magnone, Carlos Gardel was a natural choice because he is an icon deeply rooted in Uruguayan culture.
The weeks leading up to the video's release also coincided with an investigation carried out by the Gardel Rioplatense Commission (CGR), which found a document from the Uruguayan Consulate in Buenos Aires in which Carlos Gardel declared that he was born in the department of Tacuarembó, Uruguay, on December 11, 1887.
According to CNN, the record shows that he applied for Argentine citizenship while in Buenos Aires without formal documentation.
This new information, if officially recognized by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, would confirm that Carlos Gardel was Uruguayan by birth and an Argentine citizen, reinforcing his ties to the culture of the River Plate region and removing France from the debate surrounding the singer's origins.
Recognized as the greatest tango singer of his time and a central figure in the River Plate imagination, Magnone asked himself almost spontaneously: "What if Gardel sang my song?"
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