SYSTEM OF A DOWN’S SERJ TARKIAN SINGS OF HOPE AND UTTER DESPAIR
By Rose Aguilar
AlterNet
ture/79271/
March 11 2008
CA
The former lead singer of System of a Down shares his feelings of hope,
inspiration and utter dejection about our current state of affairs.
When Serj Tankian takes on political and social issues on his new solo
album, Elect the Dead, he doesn’t mince words. In the most political
song on the album, "The Unthinking Majority," he writes about a
hypocritical warmongering government running a society controlled by
antidepressants (in 2006, over 227 million antidepressant prescriptions
were dispensed in the United States.):
We don’t need your democracy Execute them kindly for me Take them
by their filthy nostrils Put them up in doggie hostels We don’t need
your democracy Postindustrial society The unthinking majority Elect
the Dead is Tankian’s first solo project after 10 years with the
best-selling metal band System of a Down. An unconventional musician
with a distinctive voice and complete creative control, Tankian plays
almost every instrument on the album’s 12 songs. "It’s liberating
because all the choices are mine. With this record, all success or
failure rests with me," he says.
Part rock, part jazz, and everything in between, Elect the Dead
invokes feelings of hope, frustration, inspiration and utter despair
about our current state of affairs.
On and off stage, Tankian takes on issues like environmental
destruction, capitalism, and the hypocrisy of pro-war preachers. The
10th track on Elect the Dead is appropriately called "Praise the
Lord and Pass the Ammunition." Each song, which is accompanied by
a video created by film directors, painters and digital artists,
is available free of charge on Tankian’s official website.
Born in 1967 in Beirut, Lebanon, to Armenian parents during tumultuous
political times, Tankian lived in his birthplace until 1975, when his
family emigrated to Los Angeles. He says he became politicized by the
hypocrisy of the denial of the Armenian genocide of 1915. Tankian’s
interview with his late grandfather, Stepan Haytayan, a survivor of
the genocide, is featured in the documentary Screamers.
AlterNet’s Rose Aguilar caught up with Serj Tankian to talk politics
just a few hours before he rocked a sold-out crowd at the Warfield in
San Francisco on Saturday. He’ll be on tour for the next three months.
Rose Aguilar: In past interviews, you’ve said it’s important to make
a statement with your music, not just put out a record. I’ve been to
a few of your shows and you have a very captive audience. Do you feel
a responsibility to discuss political issues and promote activism?
Serj Tankian: No, I’ve never felt like it’s our responsibility to
speak out as artists. I think everyone’s responsibility is to speak
from the heart. It’s not just artists’ job or responsibility to talk
about the truth. It’s all of ours. We’re human beings, and we live on
this planet together, collectively. We need to be truthful. In terms
of sociopolitical music or political music in general, speaking out
is not a must. I think love songs can change the world a lot more
than maybe political songs can.
Aguilar: You brought up truth, and that brings to mind your song,
"Lie, Lie, Lie." In January, the Center for Public Integrity found
that the Bush administration made over 900 false statements about
Iraq following 9/11. Some would say they lied over 900 times, and
this was over the course of just two years. Talk about your song
"Lie, Lie, Lie." And also, what does truth mean anymore?
Tankian: "Lie, Lie, Lie" is a song that originally had really serious
lyrics. I was going in with these really serious, really powerful
lyrics with quirky music, and it just wasn’t working. At first,
I didn’t notice why. The music’s great. They lyrics are really cool.
What’s wrong with this song? Since I was producing it, I had to step
back and go, OK, it’s just mismatched. You’ve got all this dramatic,
operatic funny music with serious potent vocals that don’t belong
there, so I went in and I improvised and made the whole thing into
a lie. Originally, I didn’t mean to call it "Lie, Lie, Lie," like
nontruth; it was more just the singing of "la, la, la, la." Then
I thought, I should just call it "Lie, Lie, Lie" ’cause it worked
perfect. The whole thing was a fabrication.
As to your question about truth, it doesn’t matter what my meaning
of truth is. I just notice that anytime there’s two people that both
claim to be speaking the truth, generally only one of them is. The
other one is trying to be perceived as speaking the truth. This is
not to say that people don’t believe that what they believe they feel
is true. This is to say that in reality, there’s only truth.
Something either happened or did not happen. There’s no questioning
of that. There’s no gray area in my opinion. When they’re talking
about denial of a genocide, there’s no question that a genocide
occurred. It’s just that because of sociopolitical or geopolitical
reasoning, they’re trying to deny it, but that doesn’t mean that it
did not occur. There’s always one truth.
Aguilar: You lobbied Congress to pass a bill recognizing the Armenian
genocide. The bill has yet to pass. How have you opinions about the
political process changed after being directly involved? What did
that experience teach you?
Tankian: It taught me a lot. I went to D.C. a few years ago to talk
to congressmen and a senator about the Armenian legislation at the
time. I was actually surprised as to the openness of certain members
of Congress. A number of them were already supporters, and a number
have an Armenian constituency, but there were a number of them that
weren’t supporters or did not have a large Armenian population in
their area. I had good talks with them. There were people that were
open that didn’t have any knowledge about it.
Here I am assuming all of these things that all of these people know
this and know that. They have more access to information than the
general public, but in today’s age, not really. Here we have Hillary
Clinton saying she supported the bill that gave President Bush
the authority to go to war, but she had access to information that
you and I don’t have. It surprises me that people make that kind of
mistake because they have more information than us, yet in some ways,
maybe they don’t or maybe they’re too busy and unable to filter that
information and find out what the truth is, that single truth that we
were referring to earlier. I think that was a major goof up that’s
working against her in the election. A lot of people did know that
it was the wrong thing to do.
Aguilar: On your new site Elect the Dead, you ask people to get
involved in four areas: getting rid of the electoral college,
equalizing corporate funding in elections, allowing people to choose
where their tax dollars go and instant runoff voting. Compared to
the songs you’ve done with System of a Down and on your own about the
unjust prison system, hypocrisy, lies and oil brigades, those issues
are fairly moderate. Why did you choose them?
Tankian: I don’t consider the issues moderate at all. For example,
the electoral college we’ve had from the beginning of American history,
and it’s an outdated institution that was put in place for the purpose
of possibly reversing the majority vote, which happened in 2000. So
we’ve seen something that’s worked against our democracy and yet we’re
so blind, we’re not talking about it. I think they’re revolutionary
ideas. They’re not my ideas. This is something that a lot of people
have thought about that I’ve just put together.
It’s an election year, and for me, no matter who we elect, if our
system is unjust, we will be beholden to multinationals, to foreign
governments, to the same type of people that have been running our
regime. We might have a more liberal person in the White House, but
that doesn’t make the system less unjust. How can we make elections
more just? How can we make them less focused on moneyed interests and
more equal and truly democratic? You look at K Street lobbying firms
that have taken in millions of dollars. These are ex-congressmen,
ex-secretaries of state that go in and lobby for foreign governments,
multinational corporations, giving them more of a voice than you and
me. That’s not a democracy. You look at 2000, where a majority voted
for one guy and another guy became president. That’s not a democracy.
We still have a two-party system. I always say that a two-party system
is only one more than a one-party system.
Aguilar: And you initially supported Dennis Kucinich?
Tankian: That’s correct.
Aguilar: And he was barred from debates. The media wouldn’t take
him seriously.
Tankian: Absolutely. The liberal media and obviously the conservative
media understated his purpose and didn’t take him seriously, and he
voted against the war. It’s really interesting.
Aguilar: You’re supporting Barack Obama now?
Tankian: I am supporting Obama. I think his intentions are good. I
think Hillary’s got a lot of great points, too. Obviously, either
of them would be better than McCain. I like Obama because he’s
confident, he comes from an activist background, and he comes from
a nontraditional lifestyle. He might be another centrist Clintonian
for all we know, and I wouldn’t appreciate that.
Aguilar: What are your thoughts on the corporate media?
Tankian: The Parisization of the media is really horrible. Look at
the conglomeration of our media — I call it corporate Darwinism
— and the mass privatization of our media. We always think that
privatization is the key to freedom of speech and what not, but you
look at the BBC in the U.K. and you’re like, wait a minute, they have
one of the most quality world news services anywhere and it’s owned
by the government, and yet they criticize their own government. We
have a very privatized media system, and we have Fox and all this
stuff. What if privatization isn’t the answer? And we have such a
hard time getting funding for Pacifica and NPR. It’s horrible.
Aguilar: I saw you with System of a Down at Ozzfest last year and
your first solo show in San Francisco at Slim’s in October, and I
was looking at the crowd singing your songs, wondering if they were
making the political connections. How important is that for you?
Tankian: It’s kind of like asking a chef when he’s making food how
he wants people to taste it. It’s beyond the chef. Some people want
to smell the food first. The chef would prefer people to chew slowly
and really appreciate the food and appreciate the ambience of the
restaurant, but they might just be hungry and just gulp it up. And
that’s fine, too.
Aguilar: I read that you’re doing a green tour.
Tankian: I wouldn’t call it a green tour.
Aguilar: Environmentally friendly?
Tankian: I’d say it’s more environmentally friendly. I don’t want
to take credit where it’s undeserved. We just learned about this
organization called Reverb, and I had management start a program
to work with them and do some carbon offsetting. We have a bunch
of stuff on the bus that we purchased that is more environmentally
friendly. The recycling thing is basic. I didn’t know that there were
these organizations that can actually help touring musicians be green
and minimize their ecological footprint. There’s a lot more that we
can do.
Aguilar: Do you think that will save civilization?
Tankian: I don’t think so.
Aguilar: Are we too late? We should have started doing this stuff
back in the ’70s. We had the answers back then.
Tankian: I’m with you. There’s this amazing environmental scientist
named James Lovelock who talks about this. He’s written a bunch of
books. I’m reading The Revenge of Gaia right now. But even before
that, I had this whole "civilization is over" theory, and now I’m
reading his books and there’s an actual scientist agreeing with
it and it’s scaring the shit out of me. Based on the accelerated
rate of population growth coupled with the accelerated rate of the
destruction of the world’s natural resources, our civilization in its
current progression is scientifically unsustainable, which is just a
fact. The fact that we can’t even perceive that and the fact that we
can’t accept it, because we can’t envision life without a civilization,
is what’s really haunting. It’s not humanity that’s in danger. It’s
our addiction to civilization that’s in danger. It’s that addiction
that makes us endangered. We know about global warming. We know about
the rise in the oceans. We know about all of the changes, from the
coral reefs to the melting of the polar caps, and yet we’re staying
in the same place and we’re doing the exact same things. It’s going
to change. It’s going to change rapidly. And we’re not going to give
up civilization. No, we’re going to be forced to give up civilization.