As long as people are living their truth or their vision, whether they're activists or not, that's the important thing.
I've always tried to listen to a lot of different music from around the world.
I'm not comfortable with just entertaining. Although I like entertaining, I also like bringing forward the truth of our times as minstrels used to in the old days.
The percentage of Americans in the prison system, has doubled since 1985.
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.
Capitalism unchecked is not a democratic system.
I think every artist should follow their vision, their hearts is what they need to reveal, not something that society is looking out for.
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.
I've got my own studio, and I've got four- to five-hundred unreleased tracks. I've got stuff that's electronic, orchestral, jazz, I've got rock, I've got metal, you know, I don't have polka.
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.
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.
Harout Pamboukjian is one of the biggest Armenian folk singers in the world. In the '70s, he was making these records that were really Zeppelin-influenced.
I write music when I'm free and for no particular project in mind.
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.
I think music is a powerful medium because it co-inspires. It inspires the artist who then inspires the listener, and it's a back-and-forth process.
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.
I don't want to spend all my time working as an activist. I don't get satisfaction out of it. I'd rather be doing something else. I'm a musician.
I think it's my interaction with journalists that has pegged me more as political than my actual records, although they have obviously political aspects to them as well.
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.
