The deconstruction of genius — Suno as participatory episteme and the reconstruction of the musical body

The debate around Suno, the generative music platform available since late 2023, is conducted by parties whose positions owe more to subjective fear than to informed analysis. What unites these otherwise divergent positions is an unexamined premise: that music is a product, that products require genius, and that genius is property. This premise was manufactured through the convergence of Romantic aesthetics, recording technology, and copyright law. As a central demonstration, the author uses a series of songs produced on Suno based on the poem by Nizar Qabbani, traversing multiple languages and production stages. The paper situates this work within musicology, media theory, music psychology, and copyright analysis, drawing on Barthes, Stiegler, Bourdieu, Small, von Georgi, Danielsen, and the current legal landscape. It concludes that the debate about generative AI in music has never been a debate about technology. It is a debate about who is allowed to sing.