‘Wake up the Souls’ is conduit for justice – Serj Tankian

System of a Down’s lead singer Serj Tankian has talked of the band’s planned concert tour to mark the centennial of the Armenian Genocide in recent comments to Asbarez.

“The idea was to take what we had done with the previous concert series, ‘Souls,’ and to project that into a tour for the centennial in 2015,” he said, referring to a concert the band staged in 2004 to raise awareness about the Genocide and to challenge then President George W. Bush to honor his campaign pledge to recognize as genocide the events of 1915.

He said that the tour culminating with a large free concert in Yerevan, where System of a Down has never performed, would be an appropriate commemoration of the centennial.

“We are also looking at televising the show in Armenia for free on the Internet worldwide so everyone can be with us in Republic Square in Yerevan,” he added.

Tankian asserted that “Wake Up the Souls,” is not meant to “just raise awareness [about the Genocide], but to be a conduit for justice.” The call to action, he explained, begins before the tour kicks off on an online community where people have already begun connecting to advance the message of the Genocide and universal justice around the world.