Four-day music festival featured top international performers such as David Guetta
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia—This conservative Islamic kingdom is rapidly trying to ease its staid social norms, allowing women to drive and travel freely in recent years, opening doors to tourists, and tolerating music blaring from modern coffee shops.
Now: Dance parties in the desert.
A four-day music festival earlier this month is emblematic of how Saudis are learning to have fun in ways that are common in much of the world but long forbidden here. The festival—called Soundstorm and organized by a Saudi company called MDLBeast (pronounced Middle Beast)—featured 200 performances, including from big-name DJs such as David Guetta.
Held north of the capital Riyadh in a vast desert, the electronic-music event drew tens of thousands of people, most of them young Saudi men and women. Many mixed traditional national dress with LED sunglasses, marshmallow helmets, and the face paint common at rave parties, embellished with crystals and glitter.
“I can’t believe this is happening in Riyadh,” said Noura Mohammad, 28 years old, who attended Soundstorm with her twin sister, Ohoud, wearing matching white coats and pink bandannas over their niqabs, a traditional face covering. The sisters said they discovered electronic music through American movies but never expected to be able to dance openly in their home country.
Continuing reading – Wall Street Journal (link below)