Saudi girl rock band shake things up!

Article

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.

Read more.

Go to The Accolade Myspace page.

Lost

See more of this beautiful model and this amazing photographer here.

Enjoy the journey.

(nb. mature content )

Ms Landmine

Highlighting the horrors of landmines and the injuries often brought upon the innocent long after a war the Norewegian Arts council is funding an organisation to run a Ms Landmine competition.

Ten women will show off their beauty and brains — and their landmine injuries — in Angola next April in a competition to win a golden prosthetic limb and the title of Miss Landmine 2008.

The project, created by Norwegian theater director Morten Traavik, is designed to raise awareness of the plight of landmine survivors. Contestants will have to demonstrate their skills and take part in an interview, though the details have yet to be finalized.

You can visit the Ms Landmine website at http://www.miss-landmine.org/misslandmine_news.html

You can meet the ladies taking part here and learn more about their plight.

To bee or not to bee ………

….. that is the question!

Brave man.

Hauntingly beautiful

by wredna

This scene I think is hauntingly beautiful.

Beijing crowds

Love this photo for its angle from above capturing the sheer scale of huge crowds of people going about their daily business in China. Even better seen at night. Here, some ten thousand people go to Beijing West Railway Station to buy train tickets as the country enters its peak travel season leading up to their Spring Festival. (2007)