Saudi girl rock band shake things up!
November 27, 2008
Members of Saudi Arabia’s first all-girl rock band, the Accolade, are clearly not afraid of taboos.
The band’s first single, “Pinocchio,” has become an underground hit here, with hundreds of young Saudis downloading the song from the group’s Web site. Now, the pioneering young foursome, all of them college students, want to start playing regular gigs – inside private compounds, of course – and recording an album.
“In Saudi, yes, it’s a challenge,” said the group’s spiky-haired lead singer, Lamia, who has piercings on her left eyebrow and beneath her bottom lip. (Like other band members, she gave only her first name.) “Maybe we’re crazy. But we wanted to do something different.”
In a country where women are not allowed to drive and rarely appear in public without their faces covered, the band is very different indeed. The prospect of female rockers clutching guitars and belting out angry lyrics about a failed relationship – the theme of “Pinocchio” – would once have been unimaginable here.
But this country’s harsh code of public morals has slowly thawed, especially in Jidda, by far the kingdom’s most cosmopolitan city. A decade ago the cane-wielding religious police terrorized women who were not dressed according to their standards. Young men with long hair were sometimes bundled off to police stations to have their heads shaved, or worse.
Today, there is a growing rock scene with dozens of bands, some of them even selling tickets to their performances. Hip-hop is also popular. The religious police – strictly speaking, the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice – have largely retreated from the streets of Jidda, and they are somewhat less aggressive even in the kingdom’s desert heartland.
Go to The Accolade Myspace page.
Susology , in their recent free mag, have an article about the underground hip hop & party scene in Tehran. Persian hip hop is known as rap-e-Fars and it’s most well known proponent is Hichkas (aka Soroush Lashkari).
As their music is essentially protest music against the oppressive leaders of Iranian society the artists rely entriely on the internet & an underground network of parties, held in people’s apartments. Here they get to meet the opposite sex, drink alcohol, dance, wear the latest fashions and rally against the state.
This, believe it or not is all very dangerous as the Revolutionary Guards regularly patrol neighbourhoods and enter apartments at will looking to drag away any one who denigrates Islam & the regime.
Check out these sites; www.parshiphop.com
And hear Hichkas here (in Farsi).
Radiohead- Harrowdown Hill.
June 6, 2008
Thom Yorke says it’s the angriest song he’s ever written.
A catchy little tune.
September 30, 2007
By Cardiff art house band The Victorian English Gentlemens Club.
Band’s Myspace site.
For an interview with the band.
