Serj Tankian
Serj Tankian
Serj Tankianis a Lebanese-born Armenian-American singer-songwriter, composer, multi-instrumentalist, record producer, poet, and political activist. He is best known as the lead vocalist, songwriter, keyboardist, and occasional live rhythm guitarist of the rock band System of a Down, formed in 1994 by four Armenian-American friends...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionMetal Singer
Date of Birth21 August 1967
CityBeirut, Lebanon
CountryUnited States of America
I think that the memory of Armenia's genocide opened my eyes at an early age to the existence of political cynicism.
To deny a genocide because of convenience and expediency having to do with an illegal war or occupation in Iraq to me, is double hypocritical.
I'd rather let the music speak for itself.
Touring and putting out records is fun and cool, but I've been doing it for a long time.
I've always worked on all different types of music, some with specific project goals and deadlines and some not. Sometimes I would write a piece of music that is almost like a film score or weird electro pieces, wherever the muse took me, and I still do that.
I don't want to spend all my time working as an activist. I don't get satisfaction out of it. I'd rather be doing something else. I'm a musician.
You can say a lot more with a poem than you can with a song, but with a song you can really be more powerful with it. You can express it a lot more powerfully.
The most important thing about music that I've learned after all this time is that to me, it's a way of reaching the truth.
Making two possibilities a reality. Predicting the future of things we all know. Fighting off the diseased programming Of centuries, centuries, centuries, centuries. Science fails to recognise the single most Potent element of human existence. Letting the reigns go to the unfoldings faith, Science has failed our world. Science has failed our mother earth.
What does civilization mean to you, and what would its ending bring to the world?
I believe very firmly that indigenous populations had a really good, intuitive understanding of why we're here. And we're trying to gain that same understanding through psychology and intellect in modern civilization.
Life is that perfect fine line between ironies.
If you allow for a purely capitalistic society, without any type of regulation at all, you will get one monopoly that will eat all of the smaller fish and own everything, and then you'll have zero capitalism, zero competition - it would just be one giant company.
I think every artist should follow their vision, their hearts is what they need to reveal, not something that society is looking out for.