SYSTEM OF A DOWN: GENOCIDE TOUR MORE IMPORTANT THAN NEW MUSIC
Rolling Stone Magazine
April 2 2015
“We want to help prevent what happened to the Armenians happening to
other people,” drummer John Dolmayan says
By Kory Grow April 2, 2015
System of a Down, whose members are all of Armenian descent, will
commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Armenian genocide later this
month with their first-ever concert in the country. It’s an event –
along with an international Wake Up the Souls tour that kicks off
Monday in Los Angeles – that means so much to them that drummer John
Dolmayan prioritizes it above making new music.
“This is something that transcends the music,” he said Wednesday on a
media conference call. “This is more important than a next System of
a Down album. This is something that is far-reaching and even bigger
than the Armenian genocide itself….We want to help prevent what
happened to the Armenians happening to other people.”
Dolmayan echoed the sentiments of frontman Serj Tankian, who told
Rolling Stone earlier this year that there was an “openness” to work
on new music. “We do want to get together after the tour and talk
about writing,” Dolmayan said.
The purpose of the teleconference was to raise awareness around
the genocide’s anniversary, since Turkey – whose Ottoman regime
executed around 1.5 million Armenians around 1915 – continues to deny
the incident. Dolmayan and Tankian, who also participated in the
call, underscored how much it meant to them to encourage Turkey to
acknowledge the event. “[The genocide] is still with us,” the singer
said. “The denial is a spit in the face of that every year.”
“It stays with you,” Dolmayan said. “It’s still with me today,
because of the stories that we did hear [from our families].”
The band’s first-ever gig in the country of their ancestors will
take place in capital city Yerevan’s Republic Square on April 23rd,
and it has planned special components to the concert to honor
their countrymen. “We have two songs that are about the genocide,”
Tankian said. “One, from our first release, called ‘P.L.U.C.K.’ and
the other from one of our latest albums, [2005’s] Mezmerize, called
‘Holy Mountains.’ The set will actually start with ‘Holy Mountains,’
and then we have a small video presentation, and ‘P.L.U.C.K.’ will
go into that.”
The singer described the video presentations as a three-part animated
video explaining what happened during the time of the genocide,
how it led to other holocausts throughout the last century and how
it continues to impact people today.
The concert itself – which the band is documenting and hopes to post
online – will be free, an important aspect of the event. “Armenia is
not a wealthy nation,” Dolmayan said. “A lot of people, if we were
to charge even a nominal fee, would not be able to pay the ticket
price….We didn’t want to make a profit off the show. The show has
a greater meaning for us. Sometimes you do things not for profit,
and this is one of those times.”
Dolmayan said he would love to see Turkey acknowledge the genocide
in his lifetime. “It would be a very healing thing for us,” he said.
“We’ve had to carry this weight around for our entire lives. Our
parents carried it for their entire lives, and our grandparents
carried it. It would relieve that weight…and I think in a lot of
ways it would relieve the weight off the people of Turkey’s shoulders
as well. Coming to terms with something that you’ve run away from
for so long is important for your healing process.”
In his previous interview with Rolling Stone, Tankian said that the
band’s Turkish fans have come to their defense when the country’s press
attempted to smear them. “They wrote to the editors of those newspapers
who were planting this misinformation, this disinformation, and fought
for us,” the singer said. “Our jaws dropped. Here we have fans in
Turkey that are protecting System of a Down. No society is unipolar.”