This past month, several big-name comedians came under fire for performing at the Riyadh Comedy Festival in Saudi Arabia despite the country’s history of human rights violations. Now, Benson Boone, Post Malone and Halsey could be facing similar backlash, as all three of them have joined the lineup of the city’s controversial Soundstorm music festival for 2025.
The event’s billing was recently announced, with The Kid Laroi, Tyla, Kaytranada, Idris Elba, Ava Max, Major Lazer, Metro Boomin and DJ Snake also revealed to be performing at the upcoming event. Boone and Posty will serve as headliners, as will Calvin Harris.
“SOUNDSTORM is the region’s boldest 3-day music festival, held every December in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia,” reads a description on the event’s website. “Set in Banban, it turns Riyadh into the City of Sound, with hundreds of thousands of fans dancing to the beats of global, regional and local artists.”
But while lineup announcements typically aren’t cause for controversy, Soundstorm’s is — especially this year. Human Rights Watch has long been asking musicians not to perform at the annual event, and the issue is tenser than ever following the first-ever Riyadh Comedy Festival in September, which saw comics including Kevin Hart, Dave Chappelle, Tom Segura, Louis C.K., Bill Burr, Pete Davidson, Whitney Cummings and more doing stand-up at a government-funded festival in a country accused of imprisoning and torturing activists and journalists. Earlier this year, the Saudi government executed journalist Turki al-Jasser.
Aziz Ansari, however, defended his decision to perform at the comedy festival this year on Jimmy Kimmel Live! earlier this week. “There’s people over there that don’t agree with the stuff the government’s doing,” he said. “To ascribe the worst behavior of the government onto those people is not fair … To me, a comedy festival felt like something that’s pushing things to be more open and to push a dialogue. You have to make a choice of whether to isolate or engage.”
As human rights experts have pointed out, though, the comedy festival — and Soundstorm — are directly sponsored by the Saudi government. HRW also wrote that the former was the country’s attempt at deflecting “attention from its brutal repression of free speech and other pervasive human rights violations.”
Soundstorm will take place this year Dec. 11-13 in Banban, Riyadh.
