Understanding Serj Tankian

Serj Tankian is an Armenian American singer-songwriter multi-instrumentalist record producer poet painter entrepreneur and let's just say that he's done a lot of things throughout his life but if there's a couple of things that he cares about more than anything else it's gotta be arch and politics he's always been the type of person who wants to expose the truth and create a better world and his most powerful medium for doing that has always been music most people probably know him the best from being the vocalist of System of a Down but he's been a part of a ton of other art projects throughout the years let's take a closer look Serge was born to our Manian parents in Beirut Lebanon on August 21st 1967 at the age of seven he moved with his family to Los Angeles California and he was here that he attended Rose and Alex believe owes Armenian School where he met his future bandmates Daron Malakian and Shavo Odadjian but it wasn't until he started going to university that he tried his hand on instruments and music and decided to form a band with his friends in the early days the band was known as soil and this is not to be mistaken with the other band which is also known as soil from Chicago Illinois anyways the band featured Tonchi on on keyboards and vocals Daron Malakian on vocals and lead guitar Dave Jaco peein on bass and Domingo lurani on drums Shawa eventually became their manager but later joined as rhythm guitarists LaRon EO and Akopian left shortly after because they didn't believe the band would see any success and of course they were quite wrong after switching band name to System of a Down and changing drummers surged Darren Sabo and John went on to tour different rock clubs in Southern California where they quickly built a fan base the band also achieved major commercial success three of their albums peaked at number one on Billboard Top 200 and although fans have various opinions of what the best system album is because there's simply a lot of quality throughout all of their albums there is one that has gained better ratings overall toxicity was released in September of 2001 and has been described as a more melodic effort compared to their debut album but still features a lot of aggression and heavy energy nonetheless as there are Malakian said in an interview going into a new surge wanted to sing more so I guess that was kind of a progression and an evolution for the band I wanted to do all that yet not loose the heaviness of the bent and I guess the hard punk mental aspect you could lose that sometimes when you get a little too eclectic so we were just trying to balance that fine line and not lose defense but toxicity isn't the only album that displays the band's playfulness with genres throughout their discography that juggled alternative metal folk prog rock jazz middle-eastern music and even Greek music somehow they managed to blend it all together effortlessly here's a few examples [Music] [Applause] [Music] now back to toxicity the subject matter and timing of this album is probably what the fans and the band members remember most vividly the album heavily criticized the US and their prison system police brutality rigged elections and so on and after a week after the album's release 9/11 happened and so no one in the u.s. wanted to play their songs on the radio anymore their first single chop suey for example was a big success climbing the charts after its release in August 2001 before virtually disappearing from Airways after 9/11 the song's chorus with its congratulatory self-righteous suicides and lament and cry when angels deserve to die was considered a bit too raw for listeners at the time in the wake of the tragedy now just a few days after 9/11 surge was invited to the Howard Stern Show to defend a wrong paraphrasing of a statement he made a week before about the terrorist bombings of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon according to his memoir he said everything that he needed to say without backing off but would not respond to the detailed opinions of the hosts despite of disagreeing heavily in his memoir Serge Roach at the performing complex bimah Hotel in Denver I see a huge screen that place god Bless America I feel sick because I feel like I aborted my gut feelings for the first time in a long while and lost respect for myself in the process I had many things to say about the abuses of u.s. foreign policy in the Middle East but all would have fallen on jingoistic ears among the listeners though I thought Howard would be amused I live in the USA and I'm afraid to say what's on my mind because of physical threats and rhetoric directed against my band members and myself in this time of confused patriotism how ironic is that I myself have vowed to never again hold my tongue as you can see Tonkin has some strong beliefs and values about politics and the world in general the causes that he's been affected by on a much more personal level is the Armenian Genocide that happened in Turkey in 1915 service grandfather was just a small child when he survived the genocides and in documentary screamers from 2006 his grandfather told horrible stories of his first-hand experiences his father his brother all the men that were there they tried them all in Chains we went closer to see him and immediately a soldier came with a weapon away away he said he didn't let us I mean I came forward to kiss my father he didn't let me he forbade it and so I went to my father but I couldn't kiss him now they took him away and it was the last time I saw him good news I wouldn't see him anymore they came looking for his father first his father was hiding because they came looking for him to take him away then they found him they found all his uncles and they took all his all the men in the family away then one day they came and told them that they all had to leave some governments have been reticent to officially acknowledge the killings as a genocide because the governments of Turkey and their ally Azerbaijan are denying that it ever happened to begin with they're threatening to close down their diplomatic and economic bonds with governments that claim the opposite because of this many Armenians still to this day feel mistreated Serge believes that it is because of this type of evil and ignorant that we allow more genocides to happen in the future luckily enough as system became more popular they were able to spread more awareness about the Armenian genocide by incorporating it as a central theme of their shows it was a Turkish mayor that saved my grandmother the government of Turkey should be hailing these seniors as heroes instead of denying the obvious history [Music] [Applause] we are a system of the guy and it's our responsibility to tell you these things and to rock you at the same time it's beautiful house surge is able to combine his talent for music and arch with social justice as I discovered from watching many of his interviews it seems like his passion to help people were there from the beginning even before he started writing music I remember stuff like my school in the streets and just specific visual memories of Lebanon but I also remember the last few months where the schools were closed down and we couldn't we couldn't leave the house because there were bombs going off everywhere you can hear bombs falling in the sky and it's a memory that doesn't leave you ever and and because everything affects everything else you think that your life may not be affecting too many people but it does your silence affects people your silence is sometimes more deadly than your words and you don't know it when hearing about this it becomes very clear why many of their music videos depict this and why much of their lyricism talks about this [Music] but this is only the beginning of surges political involvement axis of justice was an idea that Tom Morello came up with back in 2000 when he attended Ozzfest he was shocked and frustrated by the amount of white power and Nazi tattoos he saw people comfortably showing off at the show system was headlining the office the next year and it was at that point that Morello decided to contact Serge and tell him about his anti racism message they eventually got together and formed the nonprofit organization axes of justice over the years that helped people who suffer from starvation kids who suffer from parents with drug abuse homeless people and they've also restored a musical heritage it seems like Serge simply wants to spread awareness about the unfair treatment of other people every day someone's human rights are being ignored and he sees it as his job to inform and inspire others to take action to prevent this now in addition to writing amazing music with system of down search also released four solo albums and it seems like he gained a lot more creative freedom when doing so his first album resembles what he did with System of a Down imperfect harmonies is more experimental blending together classical music with rock on harakiri he mixes together everything from beatbox to electronic music while Orca Symphony number one is purely a classical composition he even released a jazz fusion album in 2013 with several prolific artists under the name jazz as christs I think it's fair to say that Serge created a legacy just with his music but for some reason he always finds inspiration to try out new forms of art about being a creative person the one said I think creativity is there it's like out in nature out in the universe subconscious stream of consciousness and we just have to tap into it as artists I think our job is to be good for centers of it's what we do throughout our lives and mass what we do as artists is how we tap into that muse really well and how do we present it to ourselves really well in this journey to become a good presenter of creativity he eventually found interest in painting and poetry his painting in particular is quite interesting since he's got some very unique ways of approaching it for example he would fill these balloons with paint and smash it on the canvas drive over his paintings with a car to give it an extra touch I guess and more interestingly he would combine his paintings with music he even went so far with this last experiment that he decided to dedicate a complete exhibition to it for every painting on the exhibition he would make a unique song and put an mp3 player on the flip side of the painting along with speakers eventually they developed an app that allowed users to scan the painting with their mobile camera and then hear the song through the app this dualistic type of arch was a cool idea that really hit home with many of the visitors of the exhibition when you listen to the music and you just look into the painting you can feel the emotion singing she feels pain surges paintings allow him to put color and shapes into the world but with poetry he creates invisible colors and shapes in people's minds in 2001 he released his first poetry book cool gardens it's a very dense book of 90 poems where he lets his words take the center of attention while glaring through oblivion which you release a decade later was more of a collaborative effort between him and illustrator Roger kopelyan a guy who previously worked on some very ambitious projects to say the least what they ended up making was what Serge likes to call a coffee table book you can easily pick it up and read a poem or two or maybe you just feel like flipping through the artwork instead I got to tell you before I read this book myself I thought it was gonna be about something very gloomy and dark I mean it's called glaring through oblivion and it has this post-apocalyptic scenery on the front what else would you expect right but I actually found myself laughing thinking hard feeling confused and even inspired when I read this it was really far away from what I thought it would be like now to conclude I want to say that Serge is a perfect example of a person who just wants to express himself as openly as possible through arch he talks about the things that many other people won't talk about the things that matter the most to him and luckily enough by combining his talents with his hunger for justice and beauty he's been able to change the lives of so many people out there search if I'm lucky enough to get you watching this I just want to say wow and also thank you so much for just being you man thank you I also want to thank you guys of course for watching this video another big shout out to my patrons as well thank you so much for your continued support it really means the world to me and it definitely helps me keep this channel go around now for as low as $1 you'll get access to my new videos way before my subscribers here on YouTube you'll get behind-the-scenes footage and your name in the credits of my future videos so if that sounds cool then click the card in the upper right corner and you'll head to page on thank you so much take care bye

Channel: Lie Likes Music

Views: 1,767,931

Keywords: Serj Tankian Video, Serj Tankian Full, Serj Tankian Best, Serj Tankian New Song, System of a Down Albums, System of a Down Music, Serj Tankian Album, Soad Interview 2018, Soad Tour 2018, System of a Down Info, System of a Down Little Known, Lie LIkes Music, Serj Tankian

Id: LwUjQebcTRg

Length: 14min 43sec (883 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 17 2018