the accolade

... is an all-female rock group in Saudi Arabia. I don't think the music is particularly fantastic, but I like what they're doing and I think they need support. In case you aren't aware, Saudi Arabia is a country where churches do not exist, Muslims who convert to Christianity can be executed, and as recently as a few years ago the religious police carried canes and publicly beat women who were not dressed up to code. Women can't perform music, especially publicly. The Accolade cannot play shows or even have their picture taken for an album cover. It's supposedly getting better there, but it's still a horribly repressive regime. (Of course, bear in mind that we support the Saudis very much, because that isn't at all hypocritical.) They're still doing what they're doing within the confines of their society, but that's more so that they don't get killed than anything else. The fact that they've even formed a band is a kind of progressivism that we couldn't understand here in the West; to us, that's nothing, but there, it's astonishing. So go download their music, add them on MySpace, etc. If they have support from a broad fan base, it makes it harder for the Saudi government to crack down on them. If it's hard for the Saudi government to crack down on them, it makes it hard to crack down on other female groups that may follow in their footsteps, paving the path.

And really, when you consider that their exposure to Western rock must be pretty minimal, the song isn't too shabby.