Personal Info
- Country of residence: Palestine
Information
It took Ivan Azazian two weeks to learn the guitar. It’s most likely in his genes. A third-generation musician, the 20-year-old cannot fathom his life without music.
He loves classic rock and other music made popular decades before he was even born. As the lead singer of the local rap-rock band Culturshoc, a six-member group that is popular among young Palestinians, Ivan says: “My dream is to be living in the 70s and 80s. They weren’t obsessed with perfect sounds back then.”
Ivan loves to improvise and break free from the rules. Who doesn’t? But Ivan has the courage to think it and do it. He has composed many songs so far, some in the quiet of his spotless, spacious room decked with pictures of Mozart and Pink Floyd.
“When I’m going through a difficult day, the notes just come out … the day composes the music,” he says. Other songs are composed during practices, though the interaction that takes place among band members makes it difficult to determine who composed them.
Ivan believes that composing has everything to do with feelings, and it is made more beautiful by breaking patterns. His feeling recently, however, has been anger.
“I am an angry guy trying to make music and putting his rage into his music,” he admits. Ivan is angry at the limited opportunities to study and perform music here in Palestine. But his anger is the very thing that fuels his music. “The anger makes my music stronger and gives me the courage to say things straight up,” he notes.
Although he sometimes writes Arabic lyrics, writing in English makes it easier for him to create “subtexts.” He has been experimenting with topics such as hope and breaking free.
Ivan believes it’s important to be classically trained at first. He took three years of solfege and four years of opera at the ESNCM.
With a deep, soothing voice, he sings:
“An empty street I pass with an empty heart and everything is dark and cold, the light is clear, it all appears to me… I had to breathe but the air I’m breathing wasn’t really mine, I’ll succeed with my need, I won’t give it up at all.”
Ivan says he tries to avoid writing directly about the politics of everyday life, preferring instead to talk about its effects on him.
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