For those who don’t know, Rotana Tarabzouni is a Saudi singer that burst into the music scene in 2015. Originally from Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, Rotana shot to stardom while studying at USC in Los Angeles.
Similar to examples that we have extensively discussed in class, the discourse around Rotana is extremely reductive and polarizing. In multiple articles (i.e. The Saudi who Dared to Sing, “… You’re A Slut!”), Rotana is quite literally used as a pawn that defines Western liberalism vis-a-vis Saudi conservatism.
Last week, Rotana performed her first concert in Europe, specifically in Paris. What is most interesting, yet as we have learned not shocking, is that it is the Government of Saudi that has financed and funded her concert in Europe. According to Raseef22, this is an indication of Saudi Arabia’s implicit acknowledgement that arts and culture is a valuable instrument of soft power and, thus, political value. Rotana seems to be acutely aware of her government’s aid, yet does not question her role in the government’s exploitation of her work. She states that, she cannot perform in her country today; thus, she has to perform outside her home. Furthermore, Rotana was quoted saying, ” I won’t settle for anything less than a global platform because the issues that I speak of, I need the world to hear them”. Thus, in Rotana’s case, a global platform compensates for the lack of a local one.
However, I wonder to what extent are global platforms going to suffice? If some of the issues, specifically in Saudi, are internal (such as the Wahhabist interpretation of Islam), till when can artists afford to focus their energies on Western audiences?
May 1, 2017 at 6:53 am
Your post begins to raise some raelly interesting and important issues of the paradoxes that drives our globalized consumer world and neoliberal values that are equally embraced by countercultural fifures and movements (like TRotans)–as well as the so-called “conservative” pariah-states (like S Arabia) that dominant doscousre from the West and from secular Muslims loves to vilify–yet we all embrace this state if and as it serves “our” purposes….which largely sync with the politics of neoliberalism. Wahanism becomes a straw man to beat in these discourses….