(Dubai) American soul and R & B icon Alicia Keys on Thursday urged young people in the socially changing Gulf region to “continue to be bold” shortly before the release of her latest album KEYS.
15 Grammy Award Winner To Reveal KEYS on the night of Thursday to Friday, at midnight, in the wealthy emirate of Dubai, and will give a live concert on Friday evening.
“Continue to be daring, continue to be one of a kind,” said the singer in an interview with AFP on the site of the Dubai World Expo, when asked about her message to young people in the Gulf countries.
“Don’t doubt yourself, everything you need is inside you,” she added.
Large-scale social and economic changes are underway in the resource-rich Gulf, where the majority of the 57 million people are under 30 years old.
In Saudi Arabia, reforms have notably allowed women to drive and allowed co-education among spectators at concerts – something still unthinkable a few years ago – although a strict crackdown on dissent remains in force.
Laws are also constantly being changed in the United Arab Emirates, for example relaxing the ban on unmarried couples living together or restrictions on alcohol.
The two countries are trying to diversify their oil-dependent economies by expanding the tourism, commerce and entertainment sectors.
“There is so much innovation, so much movement, creativity, vision,” continued Alicia Keys, who has sold over 65 million records in her career.
The album “speaks of being unlimited, of being uninhibited and of making your wildest dreams come true,” she continues.
“Divine order”
The 40-year-old singer and musician said her double album is also a “return to basics”.
“It’s really about coming home. To come back to yourself, from me coming back to myself, that’s why I call it KEYS », She explains.
The singer will perform at the Al Wasl Plaza Dome, the centerpiece of the expansive Expo site where organizers hope to attract 25 million visitors during the World’s Fair which opened on 1er October and will last six months.
This album is the first released by the singer since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, a period that has been very difficult for the music industry, with billions of dollars in losses.
“During the pandemic, I think there were so many opportunities to really connect with the people you love and understand what makes sense to you,” she said. “I see it totally differently now, like all of us, I think.”
“I really learned that there is an element of divine order in the music that I have created, because I would never have imagined a pandemic and yet the music associates so powerfully with what we lived during this period ”.
The artist, who is also an actress, author and activist, is preparing for an international tour in the summer of 2022.
In March, she will also be releasing a graphic novel titled Girl on Fire, based on its title of the same name and telling the story of a 14-year-old teenage girl, who discovers she has telekinetic powers and protects her brother being shot at by an armed police officer.