Seattle musician and composer Josh Hou released his first album Bilingualism in 2019, and his second album Feeling of Home, followed shortly after in 2020. Now, Hou is back with his third album, Diaspora, and will be performing a record release concert at Theatre Off Jackson on August 18.
All three albums touch on aspects of Hou’s experience of growing up in three countries: the U.S., China, and Malaysia. “My first record, Bilingualism, explored bi-cultural identity and the tension between an immigrant’s heritage culture and the dominant culture that surrounds them,” he said. “My second, Feeling of Home, played with the concept of home, and how that can be hard to define for someone who has roots in multiple places, especially with a dominant culture that treats immigrants as foreigners, no matter how much time they’ve lived here.”
Since 2020, Hou has felt more connected to a community of Chinese and Malaysian/Singaporean diaspora in Seattle, hence the current album title Diaspora. “Wren’s Happy Day is written for my goddaughter, Mostly of Distance is a piece inspired by a Jenny Xie poem, and Eight is in commemoration of the eight people who were murdered in a racist killing spree in 2021 in Atlanta,” Hou elaborated. “The other pieces are arrangements of songs I grew up with and that I have fond memories of listening to with Chinese friends here, such as Theme from the Butterfly Lovers, an instantly recognizable melody in the Chinese speaking world and Blue and White Porcelain, a pop ballad by Taiwanese pop superstar Jay Chou.”
Joining Hou on this album are four musicians with whom he has a long history. “I have made music with Ray Larsen, the trumpeter on my album, for many years now,” Hou recalled. “We met as freshmen at UW!”
Hou is proud to continue this musical partnership with Larsen. “He has a deep lyrical sensibility to his playing that brings out melodies in such a spectacular way,” Hou said. “He played on my first two records and this project wouldn’t have been the same without him.”
Then, in 2019, Hou first played with bassist Kelsey Mines and drummer Tai Taitano on his remotely recorded album, Feeling of Home. “They both brought such a beautiful sound that I knew I had to work with them again,” Hou enthused. “Tai Taitano develops such fantastic grooves and he’s able to react to and make every soloist sound even better.”
Meanwhile, Hou appreciates Mines’s compositional skills as much as her performance. “I love the richness of sound Kelsey gets with every note she plays,” he said. “She has a way of predicting exactly the bass line that is right for the situation, and much better than any that I could write.”
More recently, Hou began playing with cellist Alex Chuang, who uses they/them pronouns, about a year and a half ago. “We met outside of music, organizing together with the Massage Parlor Outreach Project, and it was actually a while before I learned that they played cello!” Hou remembered. “We played together at an Asian American Jazz Showcase at the Royal Room in May of last year, and it was such a spectacular experience working with them that I needed to record with them! Being from Taiwan, Alex also has a deep connection to the Chinese music on this record, and their playing really shows it.”
Chuang elaborated on the Massage Parlor Outreach Project, a grassroots collective that supports and organizes Asian massage parlor workers in the greater Seattle area to engage in struggles for their rights, safety, and livelihoods as migrant workers and migrant women. “One day Josh asked me if I wanted to jam, with myself on cello and him on accordion,” Chuang recalled. “Since then, he’s started writing cello parts into his music and I’ve played in a few of his shows!”
But joining Hou’s project Diaspora is about more than cello for Chuang. “Asian diaspora is inseparable from the experience of imperialism, war, occupation, militarism, and economic domination,” Chuang said. “It’s a story of forced migration and labor exploitation of the majority, often covered up by the upper-class narratives of a small group.”
Diaspora brings so many historical events to mind for Chuang. “I think of the brutality of the Vietnam war, nuclear testing on the Marshall Islands, and the imperial hold the U.S. maintains on the Philippines, leading to thousands of Philippine migrants forced to leave the country every day to become the working class in first world countries,” they said. “I think of the escalating rivalry between the U.S. and China, and the resulting strengthening of military presence, environmental destruction, and sexual violence enacted on the Philippines, Taiwan, the Pacific Islands, and South Asia.”
Even as diaspora continues to grow through conflict, for Chuang it also represents survival and resistance. “I hope that diasporic people remember the true stories of their homelands, what made their families leave, their histories of people’s resistance back home, and the hard conditions they experienced even after arriving at their destinations,” Chuang said. “I hope they see and join in on the Asian diasporic organizing that is happening today, against militarism, fascism, and imperialism all over the world.”
Hou connects to the multi-ethnic backgrounds of his bandmembers particularly due to his own multicultural childhood. “I was born in the U.S., but lived in China for a couple years, and then Malaysia until a couple years before finishing high school in Washington,” he reported. “Constantly changing schools and leaving friends behind was hard, but because we’d done that every couple of years since I was born, I got used to it.”
He considers these experiences formative in a positive way. “I really value having grown up directly experiencing the cultures of where my family is from first-hand, being surrounded by and speaking Mandarin in Beijing, and then the myriad dialects of Chinese and English in Malaysia,” he shared. “And of course, food! I grew up eating at Malaysian kopi tiam, hawker centers, and walking to the local mamak stall near my house for a snack.”
At age four, Hou began classical piano lessons. “I knew I liked playing music and being part of creating something that sounds beautiful,” he said.
As a teenager, he discovered jazz. “When I was 15, I went to a Mongo Santamaria tribute concert that really blew me away,” he reminisced. “The music felt really good and I wanted to make music like that.”
While still playing piano, Hou picked up the accordion about ten years ago. “I really enjoy the instrument’s expressive ability to sustain and grow notes beyond the initial attack, like a wind instrument,” he said. “I also love that it’s a lot more portable, without requiring electricity!”
And now, Hou is thrilled to bring all his efforts to Theatre Off Jackson. “Given how much Chinese music is in my work, I’ve long wanted to perform in Chinatown-International District,” he said. “I reached out to Theatre Off Jackson a couple months ago to pitch playing an album release show there, and am so grateful for the support they’ve lent to this project.”
Following that concert, Hou expects to have a busy second half of 2024. “I regularly play this repertoire as a duo and trio around Seattle, including every other Monday night at Zig Zag Cafe near Pike Place,” he said. “I’d love to bring this band up and down the West Coast if there was opportunity to do so!”
And that’s not all: Hou is working on a duo project with trumpeter Larsen called Josh and Ray. “We released an album a couple years ago, The Horn Bellows,” Hou said, “and we’re currently working on a second that will be released later this fall.”
Josh Hou performs on August 18 at Theatre Off Jackson, 409 Seventh Avenue South, Seattle.
