Serj Tankian Quotes
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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.
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Sometimes it's better to have a benign dictator than a dumb democracy, to be honest.
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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.
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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.
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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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I think music is an intuitive force. It's this beautiful wave that connects all of us and inspires us, and I think music has the ability - when you listen to a song, you're not immediately thinking about the lyrics or what's going on in the mind of the writer, you're feeling the song.
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People think our music's very aggressive or angry or whatever, and it's just the opposite, really... I like laughing. And I like being really calm before a show, and smiley.
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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.
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As long as people are living their truth or their vision, whether they're activists or not, that's the important thing.
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I think as consumers Europeans are a lot more artist loyal irrespective of the genre of music or the type of project or the collaborative effort, and Americans are more media-loyal, because they need to be fed that media to know what's going on, because we're so inundated with promotion and marketing and everything that's going on - advertising.
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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.
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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.
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I write music when I'm free and for no particular project in mind.
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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 percentage of Americans in the prison system, has doubled since 1985.
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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.
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I'm a huge Beatles fan, but I've only really gotten into them as an adult.
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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.
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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.
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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 like African music, and I'm a huge Ravi Shankar fan.
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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.