http://causecast.org/music
http://axisofjustice.net

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 and Greenpeace and a number of other NGO's, later on grew into our own organization. There's always something new going on because we don't have one cause, our cause is injustice, you know. Or justice, I should say.

Brandon Deroche: What do you attribute your overall awareness to? What path in life I guess you can say, what keeps you there?

Serj Tankian: Curiosity. I never thought about that before, so thanks for asking that. But the activism part came from the hypocrisy of the denial of genocide that I learned about that opened my eyes to other things. And sensitivity and compassion opened up from that knowledge of so many injustices, and then the curiosity keeps me kind of on the edge of trying to find out what else is out there. It's an incredibly exciting time where, you know because of the internet and technology, we have so much information at our fingertips, yet what are we doing with that information? We're not asking the 'why?' We know the details, and we take them for granted, because they're available, they're so amply available, but we're not asking why. And that why is very important, why something has come to its fruition. And that's not on Google, believe it or not. Because that requires understanding of the whole issue, not a wikipedia page, you know?

Brandon Deroche: We've been working on a campaign, for a continuation of Haiti relief efforts, specifically driven by music, and the goal for that is to kind of take the network that has come together and be able to apply it to Darfur, or homelessness, or any other cause that it's about, and really just people who want to be doing something to create a better world in a sense.

Serj Tankian: In the case of Haiti, I think obviously not far from our shores, I think it's very important to carry through with those obligations. Not just raise the money, but make sure that we have organizations that are taking the aid to where it goes, construction where it's necessary, obviously. Construction is a part of it, because the aid is keeping people alive, but if they're all living in shanty-types of getups, than it's really hard to secure their existence with another- whether it's a hurricane or an earthquake or whatever. It's no secret that with the growth of populations and the diminishing of natural resources on the planet, we're kinda looking at a weird graph. In other words, we can't continue to live our lives this way. And sometimes we always say well how can I make a difference, or how can one person make a difference, it's the accumulation of all of our awareness that can definitely make a difference, that's what it really comes down to.