Sabrina Carpenter was put on blast by some fans for giving her honest reaction to a Coachella fan she heard “yodeling” during her performance. Now the singer is being called Islamophobic because the person was allegedly making an Arabic ululation sound known as “Zaghrouta.”
Multiple videos of the event started circulating on social media over the weekend. They show Carpenter sitting at a piano and reacting to that particular sound coming from the audience.
“Is that what you’re doing? I don’t like it,” the “Espresso” singer can be heard saying.
The fan yelled back, “It’s my culture!”
Carpenter replied, “That’s your culture, is yodeling?” The person answered back, “It’s a call of celebration.” The singer still didn’t accept that premise, replying with a joking, “Is this Burning Man? What’s going on? This is weird.”
Something I’ve noticed about concerts post-covid (besides the exponentially higher ticket prices) is that audience member main character syndrome has gotten completely out of hand pic.twitter.com/lqnxNdmdwV
— Dr. Ben Braddock (@GraduatedBen) April 11, 2026
She later issued an apology after being attacked in the comments.
“My apologies, I didn’t see this person with my eyes and couldn’t hear clearly,” Carpenter wrote in an X post. “My reaction was pure confusion, sarcasm and not ill intended. Could have handled it better! Now I know what a Zaghrouta is! I welcome all cheers and yodels from here on out.”
This was said in response to a video post of the interaction, with the X user saying they were “very disappointed” in her.
“Sabrina saying that she doesn’t like a cultural arabic cheer… this is so insensitive and islamophobic,” the person wrote.
A community note was added to the post which said: “Zaghrouta (the ‘Arabic cheer’) is a pre-Islamic cultural expression of joy used by Arabs across religions, including Christians, at celebrations. It is not an Islamic practice, so Sabrina Carpenter’s reaction to the sound does not indicate islamophobia.”
Many commenters said they didn’t think it was worth apologizing for and wouldn’t appease the haters anyway.
“You have nothing to apologize for. If they’re disrupting your set, they’re disrupting your set,” one person observed.
“Wait, so if it has been a Bavarian guy in lederhosen yodeling that wouldn’t have been ok? Or is that ok? I’m confused,” another comment said. “I thought that shouting during a soft moment of a performance made you an obnoxious a**hole — regardless of what you look like.”
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