Quick-fire Questions: 10 minutes with Kety Fusco
The harp is a strange old instrument: too large, complex and impractical to ever seem feasible, and yet it sounds so deeply human that when you hear it, you wonder why any other instrument exists. This is why, when Iggy Pop played Kety Fusco on his BBC radio show, he was moved to proclaim, “The harp is not heard as much”.
Fusco was proudly listening along, and this simple utterance set her thinking. “It felt like he was speaking directly to me,” she mused. “To the harp I carry in my heart, to my vision, to my voice, and those words awakened something deep: the need to make the harp heard. To give it space, body, freedom.” The Pisa-born musician was moved to imagine her honed instrument in an aggressive new way.
“So, I took Iggy’s voice,” she continues, “I listened to it over and over. I chose some of his words the way you obsess over a single detail. I wove them into my music—instinctively, almost physically. ‘She’ was born as an intimate, personal gesture. A small secret that connected my soul to his voice.” With the former Stooges man, Fusco, created a new world where the harp is an emblem of our advancement.
‘She’, from her forthcoming sophomore album Bohème, is a profound and evocative track. It’s a stirring world unto its own, with fear and darkness akin to the Exorcist theme pitted against shimmering flourishes of electronica akin to neo-classical Kraftwerk. In amongst the whirling mire of the song, is a perfect crux of the harp itself—robust, grand and empowering, yet delicate, complex and intricate.
With a full future-fiction of the instrument in store on her new album, we caught up with an enthused Fusco to discuss the new track, working with Iggy Pop, her next dream collaborator, ghosts, The Beatles and more in our latest quick-fire questions feature. Enjoy.
Quick-fire Questions with Kety Fusco:
1. What song would you want played at your funeral?
“If I knew when I was going to die, I’d want to compose my own funeral march — the final piece of my life, a conscious farewell. But if it happened unexpectedly, I would choose Bach’s Chaconne, performed by violist Greta Medini.”
2. What was Iggy Pop like to work with?
“His voice struck me straight in the heart, but what truly moved me was his humanity — and the generous respect he showed toward my music. Together, we created something radically punk within a context that might not have seemed suited to it. It was a rare encounter where instinct and vision aligned effortlessly.”
3. Who would be your next dream collaborator?
“Nils Frahm. I admire the way he blends acoustic instruments and electronics with such intimacy and depth. His music feels both grand and fragile, like architecture built from breath. I imagine my harp finding a new voice within his sound world — not classical, not experimental, just human.”
4. What hypothetical novel-to-movie adaptation would you love to provide the soundtrack to?
“L’Éducation Libertine by Jean-Baptiste Del Amo. It’s a visceral, poetic and decadent journey — full of flesh, silence, and blurred morality. I would love to compose music for this kind of story, where desire and destruction walk hand in hand. The harp, distorted and stripped of its innocence, could become the voice of that tension.”
5. When did you start playing the harp?
“At six years old. At first, it was just a huge, difficult, beautiful instrument. I didn’t know it would one day become my voice, my escape, my act of freedom.”
6. What other instrument would you love to master?
“The organ. It’s a sacred machine, a living creature. It breathes, it vibrates, it commands space. I’m fascinated by its physicality and its power to make even silence tremble. One day I’ll play it, the way you steer a storm.”
7. Do you believe in ghosts?
“Yes. I’ve seen them. And I’ve spoken with them. Some haunt places, others remain inside people. The strongest linger in the form of sound.”
8. What has been your favourite album of 2025 so far?
“Luminescent Creatures by Ichiko Aoba. I was struck by how she merges the delicacy of her voice with a profoundly contemporary musical language. There’s a beautiful balance between the organic textures — harp, flutes, natural sounds — and a sense of suspended time.”
9. What famous gig do you wish you were at?
“Woodstock 1969. To cover my harp in mud and revolution.”
10. One weird food quirk you think everyone should try?
“Drinking cappuccino at any hour of the day… or night. Sweet rebellion.”
11. What album have you probably listened to more than any other?
“Suspiria by Goblin. I have the vinyl at home — it’s worn out from how much I’ve played it.”
12. If you could have a drink with a deceased rock star, who would it be?
“Mozart — who, in his own time, was a true rock star: irreverent, wild, and brilliant. And in our era, perhaps Amy Winehouse.”
13. To someone ignorant of the beauty of the harp, what song would you point them towards?
“‘She’, my track with Iggy Pop. In that piece, the harp doesn’t accompany — it resists, pulses, twists. It’s not the harp you expect; it doesn’t comfort, it unsettles. And maybe that’s why it stays with you.”
14. What’s the most annoying song in history?
“I couldn’t name just one. Sometimes it’s not the music itself that bothers me, but the feeling that it doesn’t really say anything.”
15. Are The Beatles overrated?
“No. They defined an era and opened paths that didn’t exist before. But personally, I’m not fascinated by them. Their aesthetic doesn’t resonate with my inner world, though I fully recognise their greatness.”
