“The Struggle for Liberation or Death.” | OST TO PROTEST |
Nobody gives a fuck.
4000 hungry children leave us per hour
from starvation,
while billions spent on bombs,
creating death showers.~ “BooM” System of a Down
Each war has its personal song. I remember the drum beats of System of a Down’s song — “Boom” becoming anti-war protest soundtrack of U.S. War in Iraq in 2003.
This is the reason why war is better explained by music rather than by cable news. When we watch how wars unfold in countries like Burma or Syria or Ukraine , we don’t care about them much. Our negligence blocks our compassion to people who we have never met, languages we have never heard or cultures we have never experienced. Sometimes we can’t even point these countries on a map.
One of these hard-to-point on a map hotspots is Artsakh — a small area between Black and Caspian seas. When a war broke out there between Armenia and Azerbaijan in April this year. At that point the front man of System of a Down — Serj Tankian sat down and wrote a song about the events. This is how he explained his decision to dedicate a song:
“These people have lived on those lands for thousands of years …They have struggle but also great beauty written on their foreheads. The whimsical appropriation of land by an empire (Stalin) placed them under Azerbaijan. They have since gained their independence and have lived a prosperous existence for the last 20 or so years. I do not believe in wars and ultimately borders but I deeply believe in self-determination and life without oppression. Therefore it is time for the world to recognize them as the Republic of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh).”
Tens of thousands likes and shares on Facebook and Twitter by Armenians around the world as a sign that it was a song that Armenians needed in those difficult times. I, as a person who types this while sitting in my warm cosy apartment in South London have to say that it’s very hard to see people suffering thousands miles away from you, while you can’t help them. It’s precisely at these hard times lyrics like these are needed the most.
“Artsakh” lyrics, translated:
We’ve always lived on these lands,
Reaped and harvested these fields,
Generations sprung from your rivers,
Children born from your mountains,
The public mask of tradition,
The struggle for liberation or death,
The enemy’s gaze at your terrain,
Our smiles at your bosom,
At your bottomless will.
We’re going to sing with our fists
With the tricolor flag of justice,
Humanitarian love of peace
With the holy blessing of a child’s face,
We are going to prevail with culture
We are going to prevail with culture
We are going to prevail by being Armenian.
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