مهرجان MDLBEAST Soundstorm: نجوم عالمية في سماء السعودية
نما مهرجان MDLBEAST Soundstorm الموسيقي في السعودية ليجذب فنانين عالميين مثل Eminem و DJ Khaled، مما يسلط الضوء على تحول ملحوظ في نهج المملكة تجاه الموسيقى والترفيه. شهد المهرجان حضور أكثر من 150 ألف شخص يومياً في نسخته الأخيرة، مما يمثل خطوة هامة في مبادرة رؤية السعودية 2030 لتعزيز الاقتصاد. لكن، لا تزال هناك مخاوف حقوقية مستمرة.
Attendees at the MDLBEAST Soundstorm 2022 music festival in Banban on the northern outskirts of Saudi Arabia’s capital Riyadh on Dec. 1, 2022. Fayez Nureldine/AFP/Getty Images
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A billboard along the four-lane highway that runs from King Khalid International Airport across the desert into Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, features the smiling faces of the kingdom’s founder, King Abdulaziz, and its current ruler, King Salman, as well as the stoic visage of a third, Muhammad bin Salman, the crown prince and prime minister of Saudi Arabia, colloquially known as MBS. “Our real wealth,” the sign reads in Arabic as well as English, “is in the ambition of our people.”
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A second billboard advertises the event I’m here to see and features the images of another three men who could, in their own way, be important to the future of the rapidly changing country: Marshmello, David Guetta and DJ Khaled. They are among the hundreds of artists who in 2022 flew in from around the world to perform at Riyadh’s third annual Soundstorm, a dance music-focused mega-festival that drew over 150,000 people a day, including myself, to a site the size of Coachella.
This year, the festival is drawing more superstars to the region, with Eminem, U.K. rock legends Muse, Jared Leto’s band Thirty Seconds to Mars and dance titans Richie Hawtin and Marco Carola set to headline Soundstorm 2024 this Dec. 12-14. Many more acts will be announced in the coming weeks, with this fifth edition of the festival marking the first time all of these phase-one artists, outside Carola, will perform in the country.
Another act that made its Saudi Arabia debut at Soundstorm is Metallica. At the 2023 festival this past December, flames shot from the festival’s massive main stage — dubbed “Big Beast” — into the cold desert air as singer James Hetfield demanded, “Give me fuel, give me fire, give me that which I desire!,” while the crowd roared. Like the country’s electronic scene, the Saudi Arabian metal community once existed entirely underground, with secret shows held at empty highway rest stations. In this new era of Saudi history, Soundstorm drew one of the genre’s
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