Video: TRISHES, ‘Language’

Kevin Bronson on June 20th, 2019

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Today is World Refugee Day, and Trinidadian-American artist Trish Hosein — aka TRISHES — has a story to tell.

It comes in the form of the video for “Language,” a tune on her EP “Ego,” which came out earlier this year. The L.A.-based artist, who has been making music and touring since graduating from Berklee College of Music, is a one-woman spectacle whose music combines live looping, vocal effects and spoken word and draws from both the pop and hip-hop worlds. She’s also a multimedia artist who created visual art and a spoken-word piece to accompany each track on “Ego.”

Importantly, Hosein also volunteers for a group that helps resettle refugees and asylum-seekers in Los Angeles. “Language” was inspired by her relationship with a family with whom she became close, and the video, directed by Jess Rew and filmed by Masaki Amai, takes the viewer through a day in the family’s life: school, work, play and, finally, a kids’ birthday party. “Because their home country does not keep birth records,” Hosein explains, “they were able to choose birthdays upon arriving in the U.S. Two of the boys chose the same day.”

It’s a poignant slice of life that runs contrary to what Hosein calls “the vilification and inhumane treatment of refugees/asylum seekers by the current administration. … There are more than 68.5 million refugees worldwide. The U.S. currently has a record-low 30,000-person refugee ceiling,” the lowest total since the inception of the Refugee Act in 1980.

The video points out the commonalities we share as humans … in spite of “Language.”

||| Watch: The video for “Language”