A note from Prometheus Bound composer Serj Tankian.
When I first read Steven Sater’s translation of Prometheus Bound I was immediately hit with a lot of profundities. My whole life I’ve been not only a musician but also an activist. Injustice is definitely a thorn in my side – as well as everyone else’s – and the Prometheus story really resonated with me in terms of injustice and tyranny, and also the creation of civilization. The ending of civilization is something I’ve been dealing with a lot, especially on my last album. So I was interested in being a part of something that deals with its beginning, and with the tools that were given to humans to create.
Just like we shouldn’t put borders on our thoughts, I don’t think we should put borders on music. I don’t think we should say music is designed for one purpose or another. So to say that it is only designed for entertainment would be shortcutting music, as would saying that music is designed solely for messages. That would be not giving music the wide span that it deserves. Music is used for many, many purposes, and I think it’s an intuitive medium that comes from the universe, connects us and co-inspires us – the presenter as well as the listener. Music has the ability to move people and change hearts, and the heart has the power to change the mind, and the mind has the power to change the world.
My goal was to bring a really diverse, different type of sound to this piece. I’ve been reading about the mythological power of music and its relationship to the origins of man, and how the original word was music. How we are music – we’re all made from vibrations and our physical interconnections are also musical. They carry harmony of some sort, sometimes dissonant, sometimes perfectly harmonic. So it makes sense to me for music to be involved in the Prometheus story, because I see this as a myth about the creation of civilization, the rise of man as a neo-god.
