Until recently, most pop culture—including live music—was prohibited in Saudi Arabia due to religious laws enacted during the country’s Sahwa (Awakening) Islamic movement. That has begun to change as Saudi leaders look to move away from relying on oil by investing in other industries including entertainment, according to a new report by The World‘s Shirin Jaafari. The government has even partnered with a South Korean company, SM Entertainment, to create a Saudi version of the wildly successful K-pop that they are calling “S-pop.”
Before sweeping reforms made by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, entertainment in Saudi Arabia was relegated to homes and private events, mixing of the sexes in public was not permitted, and pop concerts simply did not happen. Those regulations have relaxed in the past few years as the government pushes to diversify the country’s economy and dispel its conservative image. Large-scale festivals like MDLBeast Soundstorm have begun to draw the biggest names in entertainment and hundreds of thousands of spectators to the city of Riyadh.
Saudi leaders have also made big plays in sports entertainment, establishing professional competitions and attempting to lure top athletes to participate with the promise of exorbitant paydays, and the Saudi Esports Federation recently announced plans to invest about $38 billion to make the country a global hub in esports and gaming.
International pop artists including Bruno Mars, Post Malone, and DJ Khaled recently performed in the oil-rich kingdom, but the most popular artists are K-pop groups from South Korea. Experts speculate that one reason for this is the compatibility of K-pop with Saudi culture: the groups tend to be family-friendly in comparison to most western pop artists, and they are usually all male or all female—no mixing of the sexes.
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Korean culture has actually been popular in Saudi Arabia for quite a while. Korean dramas were exported into the region and dubbed into Arabic beginning in the mid-2000s. With the rise of K-pop’s popularity, though, the government has resolved to make its own homegrown version as part of its efforts to engage more young people and invest inside Saudi Arabia. The Saudi Minister of Culture recently signed an agreement with South Korean company SM Entertainment to help with that goal.
“I think we need to make Saudi pop music, but I need to see how it will be different from K-pop, and I have certain ideas about how it will be different,” said SM Entertainment founder Lee Soo-man.
The loosening of restrictions does not mean that artists suddenly have a right to free expression, and the freedom they have gained has not come without a price. Some artists have been questioned, investigated, and even sentenced for their work, with one woman receiving a 45-year prison sentence for her social media activity.
With K-pop artists dominating the U.S. charts, airwaves, and award shows despite its foreign origins, could S-pop be the next big thing?
[h/t The World]
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