Friday, October 07, 2005

Curry Rock, anyone?

"Dollar Income...sellavvu adhikam...nelamai kevalam..kevalam..KEVALAM!!"
("Dollar Income...Extra Expenses... Horrible state.. horrible.. HORRIBLE!!")

The melodious (???) strains from a new multilingual album by a group of Indian-born American techies from Virginia calling the album "H-1 Bees" (as in worker bees, get it????). The few lyrics I heard on this radio program clip made me laugh but also nod in agreement. They seem to have captured the essence of countless 'potluck' conversations and e-mails and blog entries...The Indian worker in the US is a unique specimen, (rivalled only by the more unique Indian grad student in the US). They've termed their style "curry rock", a little contrived if you ask me, but I got a kick out of "H-1 Bees" :)

The Washington Post did a piece on them, from which the following snippet is taken:
"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. (Heehee!*) 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 basement-turned-studio and released Sept. 10, is a mix of Indian and Western beats with lyrics exploring the high-tech immigrant's experience in the United States."
* Laughter added by me :)

Let's watch and see if the "High-Tech Immigrant" Bees drone on or buzz off...

4 Comments:

Blogger Parth said...

:-) That's laughter added by me

10:27 PM  
Blogger dinesh said...

RT,

My usha manni from virginia has sung a song in this album. I listened to it..I liked it. I haven;t listened to the entire album though. Should do it soon.

10:40 PM  
Blogger RTD2 said...

I thought your manni's name was Sandhya, Din! Dude..can she get me a singing contract? ;) Or at the very least, the album?

8:16 PM  
Blogger dinesh said...

You forgot RT...this is our cousin's wife. Remember ? Me and Pdp used to rave about her singing skills everytime we visited virginia ?

5:21 AM  

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