"Curry Rock" by the H-1Bees
"Curry Rock" by the H-1Bees
Date: Saturday, September 10, 2005 4:42 PM
JOB DESTRUCTION NEWSLETTER
by Rob Sanchez
September 10, 2005 No. 1327
It was only a matter of time before a group of H-1Bs formed a rock band. Here come the H-1Bees!
It's difficult to judge their music based on the short sample clip provided online. Musically it's nothing more than average pedestrian rock, but the lyrics are quite entertaining:
"Standing in line, papers in my hand,
All my answers, practiced and planned,
He asked, would ya ever come back home?
(Incredulous laughter)
Yes sir, I will, but first give me that H-1B!"
The H-1Bees are quite political and they don't mind taking some stabs at the H-1B visa program. One of them had this to say about H-1B to the Washington Post:
"The idea we're putting out there is that we're worker
bees. Is this going to be a controversy?" he asked.
"We're saying things have happened and we're putting
this conflict out there in a humorous way. The sad
thing is that H-1Bs are being exploited."
The H-1Bees complain about exploitation but they must not mind being cheap labor when it comes to music because their new CD is only $6 per copy. You can listen to a sample music clip by going to the following website. Click on one called "H1BEES".
http://www.tamiloviam.com/unicode/main.asp?sec=audio
I listened to some of the other music clips offered by Indian rock and pop bands, and I would have to say that the H-1Bees have some work to do if they want to be considered one of the better bands of that genre. I found many of the clips to be surprisingly good and came to the conclusion that Indian rock might be emerging. The songs offered a bizarre blend of heavy metal, hip hop techno, and Indian traditional and pop. "Pon Maalai" is an interesting Indian pop tune done to a heavy reggae beat. My personal favorites are "Nandauanathil Oor Aandi" and "Sundi - Suren" but that probably reflects my preference for progressive and jazz-rock fusion.
The guitar player for the H-1Bees claims that he uses a made-in-the-USA Fender Guitar. He must have worked long and hard at his American sweatshop to afford one. Unfortunately his guitar might not be as American as he thinks. As with most things nowadays, it's not that easy to buy a musical instrument that was made in the USA.
http://www.gruhn.com/newsletter/newsltr13.html
A guitar saying Fender on the peghead could be make in the
USA, Mexico, Japan, Korea or some which have combinations
of both USA and Mexican parts and workmanship.
The H-1Bees homepage is at:
http://www.h1bees.com/
One question that keeps coming to my mind as I read the Washington Post article is whether they give American bands this much press coverage upon release of a CD that is not backed by a major recording company and only available online. The Washington Post even provides a slide show of the band which you can see by looking on the right hand side of the page. I'll admit I don't know the answer to that question, but my hunch is that the only reason that the H-1Bees got so much PR hype from the WP is that they are H-1Bs. (Sorry about all the acronyms but I just couldn't resist!)
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/09/AR2005090902008.html
The H1Bees Want You: To Rock and Roll
Singing of the Immigrant Experience -- And Life in the Tech Sector
By S. Mitra Kalita
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, September 10, 2005; D01
The computer programmers arrived in the United States unknown to each other but united in their quest to rock.
On the surface, they were not unlike many others who have left India over the past decade on the H-1B visa, a guest worker program for highly skilled professionals. They wore glasses and mustaches and collared shirts. They could exterminate Y2K bugs and code Java and link Unix.
But as they toiled in cubicles, they dreamed of banging on keyboards of a different sort, of a world where C-sharp is just a musical note, not computer code.
And then their worlds became one.
"H1Bees," an album recorded in a Gaithersburg basement-turned-studio, will be released today, its music a mix of Indian and Western beats with lyrics exploring the high-tech immigrant's experience in the United States. The troupe remains unnamed, giving composer Srikanth Devarajan top billing and referring to the remaining artists as "playback singers," which is customary on many Indian albums.
Yet the computer programmers say their self-produced album would have been impossible in India, where the music industry there is exclusive.
"I was nothing in India," Devarajan said. "Thanks to the H-1, even a small man like me can say I have a studio."
"That's a big deal," nodded Kartik Venkataramanan, a database manager at Verizon who studied Indian classical music as a child and developed an affinity for Jethro Tull somewhere along the way.
Until last year, Devarajan could be described as a most persistent one-man band, using his computing and composing skills to synthesize original scores, dubbing the sound "curry rock."
The overlapping social circles of Indians in the Washington region came to his rescue last year. Out of the blue, he received a random call from friend-of-a-friend Venkataramanan. Venkataramanan's early days on U.S. shores, first Atlanta, then Washington, were spent browsing longingly at Guitar Center until he had saved enough to buy a blue Fender with a Made in the U.S.A. label he fingered as much as its strings.
At last, another computer programmer who wanted to be a rock star. Could there be more out there?
In their first conversation, Venkataramanan invited Devarajan to his housewarming party in Manassas where he promised a gathering of musically inclined folks. There, Devarajan also met Devesh Satyavolu, a multilingual poet, and Srivatsa Srinivasan, who claimed little musical talent of his own but said he always wanted to produce an album and possibly form a production company.
Days later, the new acquaintances gathered in Devarajan's studio to see if they had synergy. As they brainstormed a theme for an album, Devarajan took in the group assembled before him.
The languages differed: Tamil, Hindi, COBAL, BASIC. The journeys seemed parallel: Young man leaves India to earn U.S. dollars, works hard, buys car, returns home to marry, gets green card, buys townhouse, has kid, decides to stay.
"H1Bees," Devarajan said. The album, which will be sold via South Asian Web sites and stores for $6, boasts songs in English, Hindi and Tamil. By setting their sagas to music, they hope to duplicate the success of other immigrant artists catering to diasporas, much of it via the Internet.
Most of the artists hold green cards now, but that's no matter. They vividly describe the job offers that led to migration and the nervousness with which they gave interviews at the U.S. Embassy. Hence the title track, which sounds like a cross between the rock band Weezer and a number off the "Grease" soundtrack, with these lyrics:
"Standing in line, papers in my hand,
All my answers, practiced and planned,
He asked, would ya ever come back home?
(Incredulous laughter)
Yes sir, I will, but first give me that H-1B!"
Another soulful, more serious ballad likens the United States to a beautiful but hard-to-navigate forest.
"You step in here," Devarajan says of the United States. "You're lost. . . . During our initial days here, we were lost in this beautiful country and had a cultural change."
When it became apparent Devarajan needed female vocalists on the album, he relied on the same network that helped him find the other musicians. "This guy that Srikanth knew had a friend who had a friend who knew us," explained Alisha Thomas, a 17-year-old senior at Riverdale Baptist High School who sings on the H1Bees album.
"Srikanth's cousin is married to one of my mother's friend's cousins," explained 16-year-old Swathi Raman, a senior at Thomas Wootton High School who also performs.
The American-born teenagers are separated by more than age from the H-1B immigrants. They cannot read or write in Tamil, so Devarajan writes the phonetic spellings for words and helps with pronunciation. In a song titled "Dollar Income," Thomas and Raman sing as though they are children talking to their H-1B parents. The song debunks the myth of expatriate Indians living the good life.
"As soon as Dad got his H-1, he is forced into a wedding.
As soon as she lands, they give birth to a U.S. citizen.
Sixty percent of Dad's paycheck goes to tax.
Thirty percent goes to the body shop.
Leaving just 10 percent for them."
The "body shop" refers to the middle party who offers the services of computer programmers to companies at a profit. At times, the artists fretted over whether they were getting too preachy or political, Srinivasan said.
"The idea we're putting out there is that we're worker bees. Is this going to be a controversy?" he asked. "We're saying things have happened and we're putting this conflict out there in a humorous way. The sad thing is that H-1Bs are being exploited."
During the dot-com boom, U.S. companies couldn't get enough of the H-1B program, successfully lobbying Congress for an increase on the numbers they could hire on the temporary visas. When the boom went bust, the cap returned to 65,000. Last month, the U.S. government announced it had already exhausted that number of H-1B visas for next year-- two months before the fiscal year even begins. Lobbyists are expected to ask for more visas.
Despite the band members' now permanent status, they say they plan to watch the debate closely because of the effect on the information-technology sector -- and because the H-1B has already made their very particular American Dream come true.
None plans to give up his day job yet.
"We'll stay in IT," Venkataramanan says. "What else do we know?"
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http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1227136.cms
H1Bees! What's after Geeksta Rap?
CHIDANAND RAJGHATTA
TIMES NEWS NETWORK[ SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2005 02:24:52 AM]
NRI Special Offer!
WASHINGTON: They have been called code coolies, techno drudges, alpha geeks and beta nerds. But the commonest term for the swarm of computer programmers who have made their way from India to the United States over the past 15 years is H1Bees.
Appropriately then, a group of immigrant Indian techies in the Washington DC area whose talents range from programming to musical notes are releasing this weekend an album titled H1Bees to the best possible local buzz -- a campus release at the University of Maryland and a 1100-word spread in The Washington Post.
The seven-song, tri-lingual album -- in English, Hindi and Tamil -- celebrates the life of the immigrant techies starting with their encounter with the US visa officer. Standing in line, papers in my hand/ All my answers, practised and planned/ He asked, would ya ever come back home?/ Yes sir, I will, but first give me that H-1B!, Give me that H1-B! goes a song.
"The songs convey sentiments every immigrant goes through at different stages in life. This is a journey of independence from frugality and conformity," says Srikanth Devarajan, a computer engineer who leads the yet-to-be-named band. Some 600,000 highskilled Indian guest workers are estimated to have come to the US since the start of the H1-B visa programme in the early 1990s.
A majority have settled in the US, and like Devarajan, are now permanent residents. Much like Indian students in the US whose campus life is said to revolve "between advisor and Budweiser", the tech crowd is ribbed about being constricted "between Gateway and Safeway", -- a reference to a computer brand and a grocery chain.
But they are gradually beginning to break the mould. Musical soirees by Indian techies in the Bay Area are now quite common. Last year, Rajeev Bajaj, a west coast techie, essayed a debut CD under a genre he called Geeksta Rap, with songs aimed at encouraging youngsters to take up engineering.
H1Bees, for now at least, is more about the immigrant experience and the genre has been termed Curry Rock by the East Coast geeks.
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