Sabrina Carpenter came under fire after mocking a crowd member’s ululation during a Coachella performance, repeatedly calling the traditional Arabic and North African vocalization “weird” even after being told what it meant. The video of the exchange circulated online and quickly drew criticism.
Onstage, Carpenter asked, “Is that what you’re doing? I don’t like it,” and then said, “That’s your culture, yodeling? It’s a call, it’s a call of celebration. Is this Burning Man? What’s going on? This is weird.” The crowd member had described the sound as a call of celebration, but some social media users said Carpenter kept dismissing the explanation anyway.
The backlash centered less on whether Carpenter recognized the sound than on what happened after she was told it had cultural significance. One social media user wrote, “I love Sabrina, but I’m also Arab,” while another said, “Nobody is saying that she needs to know everything about every culture, but she continued to ignore the culture comment even after she was given a full explanation. ‘It’s my culture’ should be enough.”
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Others urged restraint, saying the moment looked more like ignorance than malice. One user wrote, “I don’t think there was any malintent on her part,” and added, “But she should have at least followed up the culture comment with an ‘Oh, okay.'”
Some Arab social media users also rejected calls to boycott the singer. One wrote, “She clearly has never heard a zaghrouta before,” while another said, “Did she really need to say ‘weird’? No, but I’m Arab, and it isn’t that deep.”
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Ululation is a traditional Arabic and North African vocalization often used as a celebration call. That context turned a short stage exchange into a broader argument about respect, not because Carpenter knew the sound, but because she kept talking after it was explained to her. As of now, she has not made any public comment about the incident, leaving the backlash to stand on the video itself.
