We were lucky to catch up with David “FuZe” Fiuczynski recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, David “FuZe” thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

The most fertile ground for me has been the continued cycle of traveling back and forth from the professional field of writing, rehearsing, recording & live performance and returning to the academic realm of Berklee College of Music. Successful intuitive ideas that have been implemented on tour with artists like Jack DeJohnette, Rudresh Mahanthappa, Hiromi, John Medeski and more….get the seal of “true, tried and road tested” and then are incorporated into my teaching. These ideas have then been absorbed by amazing students who add these concepts to their playing and in after-hour jams we have experimented with theses ideas. The most profound impact has been in the area of microtonality which means using
tuning systems other than the western 12 note per octave system and it has helped players quantify some of their own traditions while mixing these with Western chromatic or chord scale concepts. Berklee is an international hub that attracts thirsty minds from all over the world and the creative results have been mind blowing for me as an artist, and as a professor have exceeded my expectations. When you can help students develop their own voice that is based on THEIR tradition, teaching is now not a job, but a privilege!!

Here are some of the results:
– Southern Soul Micro with MonoNeon (Memphis, TN)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mREZgMXTcOY
– Georgian MicroJamz on RareNoise Records with Giorgi Mikadze (now my colleague from the Republic of Georgia)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJew2RfTdDg
– Mid-East MicroJamz with Utar Artun (now my colleague from Turkey) & Han Beyli (Ukraine, Azerbaijan)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6C9xLBM2rvk
– Chinese MicroJamz with Yazhi Guo (China)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3JyIDSB9tE
– Japanese MicroJamz with Hidemi Akaiwa (Japan)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBnypOKGB48
– and last but not least with my colleague Debo Ray (Boston) experimenting with her Haitian & African background with Screaming Headless Torsos https://www.youtube.com/@ScreamingHeadlessTorsos

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

Well, I’m a Screaming Headless Torso!! Besides the MicroJamz mentioned in the previous question, Screaming Headless Torsos isn’t just about music, but about myself, my background and the way I think and feel. I’m a result of the melting pot. My mother was from South Carolina and my father was German with Polish background. My last name FIUCZYNSKI is hard to pronounce so my father came up with an easier version : “fuse-inski” and my nickname became “FuZe”. And i guess I was meant to fuse different musics because early on I was always curious about taking a melody from one place, a harmony or chord from a different style and a fat beat from somewhere else and see what would happen. This is the musical version of a kid who got a chemistry set for christmas and loves to blow things up!! :-) For me the best experiments were musical compositions where the result was greater than the sum of the individual elements. In the abstract this means adding melody, harmony and rhythm where 1 + 1 +1 = 7 or 13 or 59 or ideally 87 trillion! An example of that is my arrangement of the jazz standard Blue in Green over a reggae beat with an added hard rock bridge and added lyrics inspired by a Stephen King Vampire novel. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRCNotvdEXY
My parents also loved art and I try to make my music as colorful as possible. These days you could say my mission (again in the abstract) is to create compositions and musical works of art that are a “FuZe-ion” process of Eastern Calligraphy and Architecture (or other so-called ‘non-western’ traditions), roll these up in a Van Gogh, Matisse or Basquiat painting and take this down south and throw it on a barbecue!! That would be Dave Fiuczynski’s ‘Sound of Love’.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

I have unfortunately dealt with playing related injuries like tendonitis. When I was 19 I had the ‘brilliant’ idea to practice 11 hours a day, but focused on the wrongs things and hurt myself. This happened right before I started at New England Conservatory and for a whole year it was really touch and go. I went to a doctor who literally saw me for a few minutes, told me to stop playing for 3 months and to take aspirin and then he charged me $250.- (which is about $735.- in today’s money).

But I persevered and there was a silver lining. In the process of looking for help I met John Medeski (world renowned pianist, organ and keybard player) who was also having problems and who introduced me to the amazing and non-western physical therapist Richard Zukowski (R.I.P.) who helped many players like myself and performers at the Boston Symphony Orchestra. John and I have had a musical relationship for over 3 decades now and are releasing “Fire Jelly” October 2023 which is a follow up to our first record “Lunar Crush”.

If this wasn’t enough another self inflicted ailment is tinitus, a ringing in the ears from playing music that’s too loud. For a while this was so bad i had to where ear plugs on the subway in New York City. After making adjustments I dealt with other struggles….in the 1990s money, band member mental health issues, unsafe travel conditions, dirty hotels, unscrupulous club owners and more. And if anyone remembers the record snowfall in Boston about 10 years ago, in the process of helping my land lady shovel snow and hack ice, I acquired permanent issues with my hands……..but as someone said “Music is my Sanctuary”. I had to readjust my technique, explore new ones and in some ways I’m now in better shape. There were many times I wanted to give up, but music is like air to me and I’m grateful.

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

A major issue is FAIR technology. Not just for music, because we have so many systems in place where few prosper in all walks of life and there are less jobs due to mechanization and automation. I have to admit I’d rather go to the self check out line where ONE employee monitors a number of check out stations, but this is costing jobs and this will destabilize our nation, actually the entire world. I’m not against technology but how great is it, really, when billionaires thrived during Covid and many others lost their jobs, house, even their life. Our nation is polarized and one of the evils is the wealth income gap. As someone said: “It’s the economy, stupid!”. People don’t have time to complain if they have a decent job.

For musicians, in particular, sites like Youtube and Spotify only pay around $0.01 to $0.05 per stream or play. The internet is a double-edged sword where we can reach an international following, but everyone can take our property whenever they please to. To be honest, I can’t remember the last time I bought a record (sorry i’m old school and say things like ‘record’), but to be fair, since I’ve been ripped off for decades and can only make ends meet by having a teaching job, how would I pay for music!?!?!?!? CD Baby, Patreon are good places to start but we need legislation to be protected.
But in the big picture it’s ATTITUDE. These days music sells everything except music and due to videos people don’t really LISTEN to music anymore but WATCH it. There’s a whole perception that music is incidental, something in the background and not even perceived with our primary organ, namely the EAR!!! Also, because an astronomical amount of music is out there, something like 120,000 new streams a day (!!), music is perceived as a dime a dozen, actually far far less. I don’t know how to fix this, but something needs to change.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.davidfiuczynski.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/davidfiuczynski/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/david.f.fiuczynski
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@davidfiuczynski8292
• Other: https://www.youtube.com/@ScreamingHeadlessTorsos https://www.instagram.com/screamingheadlesstorsos/

Image Credits
Ouriel Morgensztern Oscarinn Jaime Fernández Bill Douthart