When the sprawling compilation album “Transa” was released last fall, Massima Bell—a musician, model, and activist who helped bring the project together under the umbrella of the organization Red Hot—thought of it as a crucial act of “making archives” for one of society’s most marginalized communities.
“As a whole, trans people haven’t had the opportunity to truly have our own historical understanding of who we are,” Bell says. “It’s something that was literally erased throughout the Western gender binary that emerged from the Victorian era.”
With 46 tracks from approximately 100 artists—including many trans and nonbinary musicians, along with big names like André 3000, Jeff Tweedy, Clairo, and Perfume Genius—”Transa” lays out intimate stories of experience and allyship so that they are “honored and remembered and live beyond the present moment,” as Bells put it.
Among the album’s varied highlights: Teddy Geiger and Yaeji’s dreamy folk-pop “Pink Ponies”; a version of Prince’s “I Die 4 U” by Lauren Auder and Prince’s former bandmates Wendy & Lisa; Allison Russell and Ahya Simone’s “Any Other Way” by trans pioneer Jackie Shane; and a spectral cover of Sylvester’s late-’70s disco hit “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)” by Moses Sumney and Sam Smith.
Then there’s Sade’s “Young Lion,” a tolling piano ballad in which the famous soul singer asks her son to forgive her for not recognizing his gender identity sooner than she did.
“Young man, it’s been so heavy for you / You must have felt so alone / The anguish and the pain / I should have known,” Sade sings in the song, which has been streamed more than 5 million times since “Transa” was released in November.
Now, some of the artists involved with the project are set to bring their archive to life at the Getty Center on Saturday, with a daytime “transa” event featuring films, art installations and a concert featuring performances by Geiger, Devendra Banhart and David Longstreth of Devendra Banhart and Dirty Projectors, among others.
The acquisition is the latest cultural activism from the nonprofit Red Hot, which made its name during the AIDS epidemic with 1990’s “Red Hot + Blue,” a successful compilation LP that featured stars like U2, Sinéad O’Connor and KD Lang covering Cole Porter’s songs; after that, Buzzy’s benefit albums were similarly built around country music, alternative rock and the work of Fela Kuti and the Grateful Dead.
In an interview last year with the New York Times, Red Hot co-founder John Carlin compared recent attacks on trans people to the treatment of people with AIDS in the 1990s. “We’re doing this to make sure the culture wars are being fought on both sides,” he said of “trans.”
However, the Getty event is explicitly billed as a celebration. Geiger, who is trans and whose career spans her own albums as well as songwriting and production work for people like Pink and The Chicks, says “transa” embodies “the idea that trans lives, which inevitably become politicized, are more than struggle.”
Sumney, a singer and actor seen on HBO’s “Maxxxine” and “The Idol,” says he’s been thinking lately about Nina Simone’s enduring quote about how an artist’s duty is to reflect the times.
“I’m not sure I agree,” Sumney says. “I think the artist’s duty is to reflect me. Can’t we just tell stories?” Too often, he adds, “Minorized identities are asked to speak for their entire identity. But this responsibility impedes the ability to speak for themselves.”
For Bell, the promise of “trans”—in its acts of witnessing, as well as in a piece like André 3000’s 26-minute psychedelic jazz excursion—is that it offers “a glimpse of our collective liberation and the light within us all.” Says the activist: “Trans people are just trying to live our lives.”
