Serj Tankian INTERVIEW Imperfect Harmonies, System of a Down, and Armenia Genocide

Serj Tankian (System Of A Down) on the Armenian Genocide, creating the Axis of Justice, and how music can be a powerful tool to let causes be known. FULL TRANSCRIPT: Serj Tankian: "Yes, It’s Genocide" is the first song that I've ever written in Armenian, and it's on my new record "Imperfect Harmonies." We started working with the Armenian National Committee of America and the Armenian Youth Federation in trying to use the song as a way of getting attention to the awareness, having to do with the Armenian Genocide. During World War I, the Ottoman Empire, which is the pre-cursor to the government of Turkey today, committed massacre and genocide of 1.5 million Armenians. They also killed Greeks, Assyrians, Jews. It started with the philosophers, the senators, and- kind of the thinkers- being arrested in Istanbul and hung in public format, taken into the army for "work camps," but they weren't work camps, they were just all killed. And then the women and children were put out of their homes within 24-hour notice, pogrom in the desert, through the Deir ez-Zor desert, toward Syria, which was also part of the Ottoman Empire at the time. The hypocrisy of the denial of the Armenian Genocide led me to think, 'if this truth- how can this truth be denied in a known democratic country like ours, and why?' And that realization led me to go, 'how many other truths are there out there?' And that opened my eyes to all sorts of injustices. Axis of Justice, we started Axis of Justice around 2000, Tom Morrello and myself. It was a way of bringing together activists and fans of music and musicians into dealing with the nonprofit world, into dealing with causes and activism. We realized- we started with Ozzfest in 2002, we realized there were all these booths selling merchandise and tattoos and all these things, but there was no one selling knowledge, you know what I mean? So we became an umbrella organization at first for Amnesty a...

Channel: iTunes Video Length: 0s Date Found: Wed, Mar 09 2011 5:11 AM Category: Music Date Produced: Mon, Mar 07 2011 5:39 PM View Count: 1