We were lucky to catch up with Shuzin recently and have shared our conversation below.

Shuzin, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Are you able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen?

Well, I think I was always able to make SOME income from my creative work – it’s just that at the beginning of my journey I was more willing to live like a bum in exchange of doing only art and creative work with my days (and nights). Everyone knows, before you build your portfolio and reputation you must take many random projects that pay little and consume your time – but are also the opportunity to sharpen up your skill and style.

I think my strongpoint/luck was both me being interested in many forms of art from day one, and the fact that I grew in a small town, with a small but active scene of artists and musicians – so everything you make has an instant feedback and a social circle keeping your creative spirit up.

In larger cities the different scenes might be more segregated – the punks would not necessarily mix with the jazz heads, the graffiti writers wouldn’t mix with the art students etc. Haifa city – where I grew up and live to this day – is practically a small town of 300k people. so If you do anything which applies as “alternative” art then you’d find yourself in that scene.- a mish mash of many genres and forms of art as this is the only way the scene can become an effective mass of people.

It’s like, if you don’t have many options you would get less selective, but in this case it is actually for the best because the people in our scene tend to be more open minded towards like-minded people with a different jam.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I am Shuzin,
I do many different productions in the fields of music and art.
My main job these days is being a music producer – for bands, for film and television.

what type of products/services/creative works you provide?
I do many different projects and productions in the field of art and music. I am trying to narrow it down to music production, but still to this day I find myself also designing logos and cover artworks, producing music videos, doing video editing etc. I think it’s a must these days – to be a DIY artist thats capable of taking care of as many sub-fields of the profession. It’s also more fun that way. I’m actually doing a 15 hour course these days, teaching this topic exactly. it’s called (in a free translation – ) “The Way of the Gypsy – becoming a DIY music creator”

What are you most proud of?
“They are all my children”… so it’s hard to say which of my projects i’m “most proud of”.
I think that creating art for a living, keep on being excited by it, and feeding my family while doing so – might be the thing i’m most proud / grateful for.

What are the main things you want potential clients/followers/fans to know about you/your brand/your work/ etc.
Follow Ghostown,Records! that’s my record label and where my musical projects and collaborations are being published.

What’s been the most effective strategy for growing your business?

I would say – two things:

1 – I try to avoid global payments and charge per session / hour.
It is a way of becoming more prepared for the session – both on my end and on my client’s, and a mechanism that accelerates the completion of projects. In our field, works can easily drag and postpone, but when every session has a financial meaning – it naturally creates focus – at least to my experience.

2 – The first question i’m asking a client is always “what’s the deadline?”. It is more important for me to understand if I can actually achieve the completion of a job – before even speaking about terms and payment. It makes the person in front of me understanding our potential obstacle – as I see it – would be my schedule – and not the money.

Have you ever had to pivot?

In my 20s I was juggling a lot between music and visual arts – where music was consuming a small portion of my time – with occasional bands and projects I took part in, but my main job being mural work and graphic design – as part of the collective “Broken Fingaz”. This was a crew I founded as a teenager and which rapidly grew to be well known both locally and globally – thus gave me the opportunity to tour the world with my best friends who formed the collective – Unga, Deso and Tant. But the outcome of this was me postponing my music career – always coming second to the visual arts.
So – at 30 I basically switched to music – and music production in particular. It was a tough decision – I was about to leave behind not just a soaring enterprise – but the frequent opportunities to tour the world and most importantly – constantly making art with my homies. I remember thinking about doing that witch for a while. and what made me decide at the end was the fact that people were more excited about occurrences in my career at that time than me. From the outside it looked as if there could not be any reason not to keep going. But for me letting the music side fade away (and it did, as the visal arts projects became bigger and more demanding of my time) was simply not listening to my heart. And so – I’ve made this tough decision, but with a good feeling i’m doing what is right.

Luckily for me – I had kind of a smooth transition – as people knew me for a creative person – from my visual art era, but also knew me from some of my musical projects. I got some job offers to start building my production portfolio and within 3 years I became just that: a full-time independent music producer.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.instagram.com/ghostown.records/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shuzin.ghostown/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/i.am.shuz
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/Ghostown.Records
• Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/shuzin

Image Credits

1 – by the piano – by Matansky
2,3,4 – album covers – art by Kip (ex Broken Fingaz)
5 – Koy Kardesler album cover – art by Andrew Buck
6 – Yamim Noraim – art by Unga (Broken Fingaz)