Musical Luminary Serj Tankian Gives His Take on Armenian Issues

Tankian credits his vision for a free and democratic Armenia along with his view of the hypocrisy of the US government on the issue of the Armenian Genocide for spurring his transformation from an iconic music artist back into an Armenian activist. “I was an activist before I was a musician,” Tankian said. “My activism for the Armenian cause transitioned into my music, with political ideas such as the US government ignoring the Armenian Genocide being included heavily in it. This led to my vision now for Armenia, which is a free and creative Armenia getting ready for the future.”

Tankian’s grandfather, Stepan Haytayan, was a survivor of the Armenian Genocide, the Ottoman government’s systematic extermination of 1.5 million Armenians, who fled Turkey and settled in Lebanon. An affiliate of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation and a member of multiple school and church boards, Tankian cites him as being one of his main influences when it came to Armenian issues. “My grandfather was an Armenian patriot through and through,” Tankian said. “I can recall him reading us stories of the Armenian fedayi and the history of the Armenian Republic, which really made him become an inspiring older figure for me.”

Tankian supports Creative Armenia philanthropically as a board member with the goal of creating a more creative and innovative Armenia. Creative Armenia is a non-profit arts foundation founded in 2017 to rejuvenate the arts and build creative industries and programming while providing opportunities for artists across all creative fields. “Creative Armenia was started a couple years back by a few friends of mine, who invited me to be on their board,” Tankian said. “They have done a couple of cool challenges which have included writer/director Terry George and myself to help promote creativity in the Armenian music and film industry. Examples of some of the challenges would be to tell a human rights story in 60 seconds with no dialogue or to finish a composition that I wrote the first seven notes for. It truly is a great idea because it is a non-profit organization that helps sponsor artists from all over Armenia.”

Anthony Bourdain, the host of his widely successful television show, “Parts Unknown,” tragically took his own life earlier this year during production of its 11th season. Before that, however, he took a trip to Armenia to film an episode for his show. Tankian was instrumental in getting Bourdain to go to Armenia.

“Many months ago, I was watching ‘Parts Unknown’ with my wife, which we are both huge fans of,” Tankian said. “My wife suggested to me that I should contact him on a possible episode to Armenia, which I thought would be a great idea. I got his email from my friend at William Morris and sent him an email regarding filming an episode in Armenia and how I have his back if he went there. I thought I would never hear back from this guy again. He responded in 10 minutes saying ‘you’re on, I’ll have my producers reach out to you over the summer,’ which they did, and I helped them behind the scenes on where to go and who to meet. We then flew into Armenia in October of last year to shoot ‘Parts Unknown: Armenia,’ which came out on May 19. Of course when I heard about Tony’s passing, that really threw me off and it has been tough to deal with.”

Before Nikol Pashinyan, velvet revolutions, and Anthony Bourdain, Tankian was known primarily for his role in the band, System of a Down. The band was known for its “unique charm,” as Tankian put it, which helped increase its popularity. “When the band started, we came to the L.A. music scene as a very unique band, with our style of music being different from the one being listened to on radios and from what was going on at the time musically,” Tankian said. “However, people started to enjoy our style of play and that led to many sold-out concerts in Los Angeles and us being signed by a label. Even with that, it was still a challenge since we had to tour everywhere over the first few years, but that also got us a strong and loyal following which then translated into the music charts. So it was a methodical and long-term working effort, but even so, there still was an element of surprise because there are many bands that did the same thing we did, but did not reach critical success. In a way, sometimes it doesn’t matter how hard you work or how much you envision things. Sometimes there’s also a matter of chance involved in the success.”