The Justice

Media Credit: Julian Agin-Liebes Zullo discusses his work with writer Dan Forman in the green room of Farber Library

Boston native Justin Zullo '10, who assumes the stage moniker "Conundrum," has taken hold of the Brandeis community with the eclectic hip-hop style he and his six-piece band, Zullo, have engineered, performing their songs at numerous events and fundraisers around campus. Their music is a fusion of jazz and rock instrumentation elaborately layered to create a patchwork of melody used to advance intricate grooves and Justin's earnest verbiage. The band released a self-recorded, self-mixed record called The Bricolage EP and are intent on injecting their music into the ears and minds of individuals far past the boundaries of this campus.

JustArts: What are your musical influences?

Justin Zullo: Hip-hop music struck me when I was about 10 or 11. I remember Doggystyle by Snoop Dogg came out, and I remember Gravediggaz, Wu-Tang, all these people who were just coming out. Hip hop then was grimy and mysterious and very dark; for example, I remember Biggie Smalls' Ready to Die.

Later I started getting into groups like the Roots, KRS One, Talib Kwali and Mos Def. That was a transition period for me when my writing started to become more topical. But if you listen to somebody enough you start to pick up on things that you don't even realize. There's a fine line between intentionally ripping off somebody's style and just growing up off somebody and have them influence you.

JA: How did you initially get into creating your own music?

JZ: My stepfather was a musician, and he had a lot of audio equipment ,like a four-track recorder, and he taught me how to use it. So I would remake tracks by Method Man and RZA from the Wu-Tang Clan with beats that I could make on this little Casio keyboard. And by remaking beats I started to get the skills to create my own beats by the age of 12 or 13. Soon I got a better keyboard and started to work my way up. When I was 15 I started writing out actual songs, like verses and choruses, and I would perform them at parties and proms in high school.

JA: How did you develop your performance skills?

JZ: Probably the biggest advancement in my performing skills came when I joined a youth-empowerment-through-music program in Boston for inner-city kids. I ended up going into a songwriting/performance program there. Basically, it would last two to three months, and they would teach you how to write songs with structure and create music in the studio. After you're done making your song, you could record it on a CD, and in the last month of summer, you would perform it in spots in Boston like the Strand Theater in Roxbury, spots in New York and other places in the Northeast. It was like a mini tour. The veterans and facilitators would give you tips on improving your performance skills. I remember this one dude; he was a break-dancer and he came to do a workshop one day, and one thing he did was he stepped on stage with his hands behind his back. He talked to us for about 10 minutes and never used his hands. It was meant to show us that it is important to use your entire body onstage and not to engage the audience by utilizing the whole stage.

Continued...

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