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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.

Serj Tankian

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Serj Tankian
Age: 57
Born: 1967
Born: August 21
Bassist
Environmentalist
Essayist
Guitarist
Keyboardist
Lyricist
Peace Activist
Pianist
Poet
Record Producer
Singer
Singer-Songwriter
Revolutionary
Younger
Gees
Listening
Armenian
Freedom
Abba
Soul
Armenians
Music
Funk
Bees
Protest

More quotes by Serj Tankian

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The living ideas of the dead are more powerful and effective than the dead ideas of the living.
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Awareness in our society has flipped all types of injustice on its head.
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Spirit moves through all things.
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Touring and putting out records is fun and cool, but I've been doing it for a long time.
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I really feel like civilisation's already over. It's not ending but it's already done. We're all addicted to the concept that humanity equals civilisation and that's not the case. We need a global conversation to be able to decipher how we can live from this point forward. We have to redefine our relationship with our environment.
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What does civilization mean to you, and what would its ending bring to the world?
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In terms of political things, I think it's important to be more direct in terms of political statements. I think in terms of philosophical and things that you plant things and see them grow lyrically or musically, it's okay to be subtle.
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Life is that perfect fine line between ironies.
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Political statements are usually more direct, and it works with the upbeat music as well, for some reason, the directness of your statements.
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People always ask me 'do you think there should be more bands doing political music?' and I say 'absolutely not.'
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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.
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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.
Serj Tankian
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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.
Serj Tankian
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It's probably a combination of personal and non-personal matters that have led us to where we are musically.
Serj Tankian
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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.
Serj Tankian
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Sometimes it's better to have a benign dictator than a dumb democracy, to be honest.
Serj Tankian
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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.
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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.
Serj Tankian
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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.
Serj Tankian
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Day is just a collection of hours.
Serj Tankian