System of a Down leader launches campaign against Imagine Dragons performance in Baku

System of a Down frontman Serj Tankian launched a campaign against the performance of his colleagues from Imagine Dragons in Baku. The petition, which he posted on the Change.org website and on his social networks, is based on Azerbaijan’s accusations of genocide against the Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh. Igor Gavrilov talks about how the rock and roll brotherhood is bursting at the seams under the pressure of political waves.

“Currently, Azerbaijan blocked 120,000 Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh (the ancestral land of Armenians). Due to the ongoing illegal blockade of the Azerbaijani government, Armenians are unable to obtain food, medicine and other essentials. Azerbaijan is causing pregnant women to miscarry and children to die of starvation” is just one paragraph from a petition that System of a Down’s Serj Tankian posted on Change.org. Paying tribute to Imagine Dragons’ musical talent and human rights activism, the leader of the US-Armenian band suggests that Dan Reynolds, Ben McKee, Dan Platzman and Wayne Sermon simply do not have enough information about what is happening in Nagorno-Karabakh.

A few months ago, after learning about Imagine Dragons’ plans to perform in Baku, Mr. Tankian, through Imagine Dragons representatives, sent a letter to the group with a link to many articles about events in the region, including the text of Amnesty International, with which Imagine Dragons, according to him, had fruitful contact . Having never received a response from the band, on August 16, Serj Tankian posted an appeal to Imagine Dragons on social networks. Imagine Dragons fans and the Armenian community around the world supported the musician, literally bombarding the Imagine Dragons social media page with calls to cancel the concert and statistics given in Tankian’s petition. At the moment, the concert in Baku remains in the group’s schedule.

Imagine Dragons doesn’t disable comments on their social media. It seems that the musicians are used to the fact that the band’s accounts become a platform for politically active fans.

Along with quotes from Serj Tankian’s petition, the Imagine Dragons page contains comments calling for the cancellation of the August 29 Tel Aviv concert. “Please cancel your concerts in Israel,” user lanasavoca writes. “As I write these lines, Palestinians are forced to leave their homes, their homes and schools have been destroyed, their businesses have been burned. Freedom for Palestine!

Back in 2013, in an interview with Billboard, explaining the success of the group, Dan Reynolds cited two reasons: “The first reason is that I was born in Las Vegas and have been lucky since childhood. Second, our group never says no to anyone.” According to the leader of Imagine Dragons, this is what they live for – to perform in places where they have never been seen.

A policy of absolute silence is the best way out when a group is embroiled in political infighting. Otherwise, it will turn out like with The Killers, a scandal around which broke out at a recent concert in Batumi.

Following their tradition, the musicians invited a drummer from the hall who could play one of the songs with them. One of the spectators went up to the stage and when asked by the musicians where he came from, he said that he was from St. Petersburg. The band played with him. As it turned out, to the displeasure of some Georgian viewers. After the performance of the song, band leader Brandon Flowers told the audience that he does not separate people by nationality and that everyone in this hall is brothers and sisters.

In general, the concert was successful, but this phrase became the catalyst for a scandal. Critics reproached the musician for not being guided by the political situation in Georgia and did not know anything about the mood in the local society towards Russia. The group tried to explain their position on their pages on the Internet, which only added fuel to the fire. “The crowd’s initial reaction was that they didn’t mind having a man come on stage with us,” wrote The Killers. may be misinterpreted. We didn’t mean to upset anyone and we apologize.”

Thus, The Killers, no less popular and talented group than Imagine Dragons, hinted that the basic principle of rock and roll – “all people are brothers” – could still be revised.

Obviously, when selling tickets to The Killers concert, the concert organizers did not ask the buyers for a passport and did not divide them according to nationality. This is the custom in countries with market economies. A drummer from Russia came to the concert on a general basis. Baku fans who buy tickets for Imagine Dragons are also not asked how they feel about the situation in Artsakh. They just waited for this group all their lives. And they waited.

But we must remember that the current political situation in the world is not conducive to uniting anyone. A band’s contract with a tour organizer, like a concert ticket purchased by a music fan, does not guarantee that both the band and the fan will get from the concert what they came to it for. The informational and emotional background does not contribute to this. And if you don’t want to run into a hate, just shut up.