Saudi Arabia has asked Oscar-winning composer Hans Zimmer to work on a new version of its national anthem, a senior official said, as the conservative kingdom steps up an image makeover.
Zimmer, whose film scores include 1994’s “The Lion King”, “Dune” and the “Dark Knight” trilogy, has agreed to the “broad outlines” of the project, General Entertainment Authority chairman Turki Alalshikh said.
“We discussed a lot about many future projects that I hope will see the light of day soon… including rearranging the Saudi national anthem with different instruments,” Alalshikh, the ringmaster behind several Saudi initiatives, posted on X.
Germany’s Zimmer also discussed a Saudi-inspired musical called “Arabia”, a “very large concert” and the soundtrack for “The Battle of Yarmuk”, a forthcoming Saudi film, Alalshikh said.
“We agreed on the broad outlines of all these projects and I hope we will reach a final agreement on them,” he said.
The Saudi anthem “Aash Al-Malik” (“Long Live The King”) was written in 1947 by Egyptian composer Abdul Rahman Al-Khateeb, at the request of founding monarch King Abdulaziz, according to nationalanthems.info.
The current version is in the “Arab fanfare” style common in the region in that era, the website said.
Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest oil exporter and home of Islam’s holiest sites, is pursuing an ambitious revamp as it tries to diversify its economy away from crude.
After reopening cinemas, allowing women to drive and admitting the first non-Muslim tourists in 2018, the makeover has gone into overdrive with a slew of mega-projects including resorts and NEOM, a futuristic city in the desert costing $500 billion.
Alalshikh has been involved in a number of cultural and sporting promotions including heavyweight boxing and a list of concerts by foreign musicians.
It was not immediately clear why the authorities were looking to revamp the anthem.
But activists have said the Saudi authorities’ overall push to upgrade their image is an attempt to gloss over fundamentally unchanged hardline policies, including limited rights for women, curbs on free speech and some of the world’s highest execution figures.
