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The H1Bees Want You: To Rock and Roll
The H1Bees, from left, Alisha Thomas, Kartik Venkataramanan, Srikanth Devarajan and Swathi Raman, are releasing a CD that details what it's like to work at information technology on a visa.
(By Preston Keres -- The Washington Post)
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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.
