Progress to be Thankful For: Saudi Arabian Girl Rockers

Meet the Accolade, Saudi Arabia’s first all-girl rock
band. In a country where women are forbidden to drive and, not so long ago,
even men were arrested for attending rock concerts, the four women in the band
have piercings, tease their hair, and walk around the city with their faces
exposed. And, most shockingly, they're stellar guitar players who are not afraid to belt out lyrics about love gone awry.

So far, the band's iconoclasm has been met with implicit approval. The
group’s MySpace page has earned them modest fame, with hundreds of Saudis downloading their single, “Pinocchio.”
They also play private concerts, and are currently recording an album.

This is an amazing sign of progress in a country where, only ten
years ago, religious police used to roam the streets with canes, looking for
men with long hair or women whose heads weren’t covered. Today, Jidda, the Accolade's cosmopolitan hometown, has a thriving music scene–though official concerts
are still few and far between–and is mostly free of the religious police’s
terror.

“The upcoming generation is different from the one before,”
said Dina, the Accolade’s 21-year-old founder. “Everything is
changing. Maybe in 10 years it’s going to be O.K. to have a band with live
performances.”

The musicians' parents are all supportive of their daughters' musical endeavors, but have asked them not to make too much of a splash. Hopefully, the young women will eventually be able to show their parents, and the rest of Saudi Arabia, that making a splash is what rock 'n roll is all about. 

Photo: The Accolade's MySpace page