Life is that perfect fine line between ironies.
— Serj Tankian
I think it's my interaction with journalists that has pegged me more as political than my actual records, although they have obviously political aspects to them as well.
I am more interested in how people interpret the phrase 'Elect The Dead' than what I may or may not have intended. I named the album after the track, which is a spiritual song about love, life and death and is the heaviest song on the album without having any heavy instruments.
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.
With most of the songs and music that I've composed, irrespective of the myriad videos made, I was always careful not to overly define the experience, leaving room for people to internalize things for themselves, making their experience more integral.
I've worked with some great orchestras and amazing classical musicians, but I don't like the conceptualization of classical music as an elitist form of art.
My two interests are spirituality and politics. I would mesh them in some way; maybe try to figure out the politics of spirituality, or the spirituality of politics. Or maybe come up with this really crazy naive solution for the end of civilization.
Corporatization is the descendant of industrialization.
I've always tried to listen to a lot of different music from around the world.
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.
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.
I've got my own studio, and I've got four- to five-hundred unreleased tracks. I've got stuff that's electronic, orchestral, jazz, I've got rock, I've got metal, you know, I don't have polka.
Sometimes a good love song can change the world and create positive energy more than any political song can.
Awareness in our society has flipped all types of injustice on its head.
People get so attached to a position which they identify themselves with that they just spurt it out, but they can't really give you a viable reason why they feel that way.
I think anytime that you go to the extreme of any mode of economics, be it capitalism or communism, you have these feedback mechanisms that make the system turn in on itself.
A lot of pop music is based on trying to make people remember it so that they'll buy it. To me, it was not about that.
I think every artist should follow their vision; their hearts is what they need to reveal, not something that society is looking out for. That said though, I think also artists have, continuously good artists, have been good for their times.
We're addicted to this concept of civilization - we can't imagine living outside of it because we've had it for 10,000 years, all of what we call history. But according to archaeologists, humanity has been on this planet for millions of years in indigenous form.
I think that the memory of Armenia's genocide opened my eyes at an early age to the existence of political cynicism.
I think music is a powerful medium because it co-inspires. It inspires the artist who then inspires the listener, and it's a back-and-forth process.
It's the idea of a multi-sensory experience stemming from music that opened my interest into painting, to be honest.
I write music when I'm free and for no particular project in mind.
I think I might write a book. I like writing. People have asked me if I would get into politics, but I think I feel a lot more effective being a representative of truth through the arts.
Harout Pamboukjian is one of the biggest Armenian folk singers in the world. In the '70s, he was making these records that were really Zeppelin-influenced.
I'm a huge Beatles fan, but I've only really gotten into them as an adult.
I hate injustice, and I can't help but speak against it. But I don't want to get involved in politics.
In the last few years I've been listening to jazz more than anything else. I listen to a lot of world music and experimental here and there.
You listen to Bob Dylan and you can't help but think of the 60s, it's very relational and if artists are true artists and not just mere musicians they need to be truthful because the music doesn't come from them it comes from the universe and it's to be shared. At best, we're skilled presenters, and I say that at best.
People always ask me 'do you think there should be more bands doing political music?' and I say 'absolutely not.'
The best way to do that is to pick up a new instrument or an instrument that you don't typically write on and see where it takes you. Whether it's using an acoustic guitar, or piano, or electronics as tools, all of these lead to creating different types of songs and I used all of these methods for this record.
Capitalism unchecked is not a democratic system.
Sometimes it's better to have a benign dictator than a dumb democracy, to be honest.
With 'Elect the Dead,' I learned how to make a rock record without a rock band and make the rock record I've always wanted to make.
I like having songs that go from the personal to the kind of inter-relational, universal, because everything comes back to micro/macro and everything's tied in.
'Elect the Dead' is a rock record that takes you on a journey with different types of genres integrated, different lyrical themes digested, and many fun and colorful moments to enjoy.
If you're using live bass versus orchestral bass, you've got to make sure that you're not stepping on the toes of the other elements, so you've got to balance it out.
In America, there's more of the question, should music be political or should it just be for entertainment purposes, whereas around the world that's not even an issue. I think people just assume that music should be everything.
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.
With rock music, the amount of power that you can generate, the intensity behind the intentions of your lyrics that you can really reflect through rock music - you can't do that in jazz. You can't do that with classical.
I like African music, and I'm a huge Ravi Shankar fan.
As long as people are living their truth or their vision, whether they're activists or not, that's the important thing.
I have a more direct avenue to expression as an artist than I ever would as a politician.
When I was younger, I was listening to a lot of Armenian music, you know, revolutionary music about freedom and protest. In the 70s I was listening to soul and the Bee Gees and ABBA, and funk.
I think every artist should follow their vision, their hearts is what they need to reveal, not something that society is looking out for.
Composing is what I love most from what I do. Each genre has a unique expression that you cannot supplant with another. All the records co-inspire each other though they are not tied conceptually in any way to another.
As an artist, you never want to write the same song again, you always want to challenge yourself to writing in a different way.
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.
