Intel Education: the innovator: Making Music in Utah

Intel Computer Clubhouse Youth Signs Record Deal

When Hemen Barzangy's debut album of Kurdish rap music was released by a Swedish recording label in December 2002, the CD release party was held at the Intel Computer Clubhouse in the Sorenson Multicultural Center in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Barzangy, a senior in high school, has been making music since he was a child in the Kurdistan region of Iraq. But it was not until last year when a friend brought him to the music room at the Intel Computer Clubhouse that the aspiring musician had access to equipment that allowed him to lay down the tracks for a studio-quality CD.

A few months earlier a producer from Starn Music Records, the Swedish label, had heard Barzangy's music on a popular Kurdish Web site and suggested the youth send him a demo. With the help of clubhouse assistant Kiril Boyadjieff, Barzangy spent a few months polishing and recording enough songs for an album, which he titled Zhian Parwary Kurds (roughly, "Die for Our Land"). The rest, as they say, is history.

"Hemen has been one of the pioneers in the music room, in that he's the first to take his work beyond the amateur level," says Boyadjieff, who has worked with Hemen and other youth in the music room for the past year.

"When he came to the clubhouse he didn't have more than bare-bones computer literacy. Now he knows how to produce and mix audio on the computer; he's designed all of his own CD inserts and labels, and he's putting together his own Web site."

Barzangy was 12 when his parents and four brothers and sisters came to the United States as political refugees and settled in Utah. At 14 he began to take music seriously after hearing rap artist Tupac Shakur. He acquired a cheap piano keyboard and experimented with recording on a home computer, but repeated crashes and lost recordings left him frustrated.


		"When he came to the clubhouse he didn't have more than bare-bones computer literacy. Now he knows how to produce and mix audio on the computer; he's designed all of his own CD inserts and labels, and he's putting together his own Web site."

Then one day last year, his best friend brought Barzangy to the Intel Computer Clubhouse. There he met Boyadjieff, a musician and art major at the University of Utah. Boyadjieff introduced him to a new world of possibilities in a little cubicle with windows in a back corner of the clubhouse: the music room.

With high-grade microphones, electronic keyboard, guitar, drum machine, mixing board, and a computer loaded with music-editing software, Barzangy found himself in a real recording studio.

"The equipment here got me going," says Barzangy, "and it has meant everything. When I'm not in school or working at my after-school job, I come in early and spend maybe 15 hours a week here."

Barzangy's success has had an impact on other aspiring young musicians at the center, according to Intel Clubhouse Coordinator Carole Costa. "Before, the youth were using the music room to make a few songs and burn a CD. After Hemen's release party, they realized that making your own music can actually lead to a recording. Now the room is booked up to two weeks in advance."

A second album is in the works, Barzangy says. "It's totally different from the first one, with new beats and new lyrics in English. But it's still rap and still related to my past themes of freedom and what I've been through."

The Intel Computer Clubhouse Network is an after-school community-based technology learning program that enables youth in underserved communities to acquire tools necessary for personal and professional success. The Intel Computer Clubhouse provides a supportive learning environment where youth build skills and self-confidence, working together with adult mentors who provide inspiration and serve as role models.

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