TRAИƧA: a project for our time #1
LGBTQ+++ series: A prismatic spiritual journey: Chapters 1 - 4
TRAИƧA: a project for our time, part 1
Note: This is the second of a three part, long-form feature on LGBTQ+ music. You can find the first, which sets a context for these two pieces on the TRAИƧA project here:
The whole three-parter emerged out of my discovery of the TRAИƧA project. A giant musical release from the Red Hot Organization in the USA in support of trans people’s rights and lives and as a showcase for the musical creativity of this part of the LGBTQ+ community - at a time when it is increasingly under threat…
Introduction
Every day, it seems, there is a new story from somewhere in the world about the challenges and dangers faced by LGBTQ+ people – and the trans community in particular. In the decades since the release of Bronski Beat’s seminal 1985 album The Age Of Consent, it might appear that the legal and cultural conditions for LGBTQ+ people have markedly improved – both in terms of the literal ‘age of consent’ in many countries, but also the wider acceptance of homosexual, trans and queer life.
However, this always depended upon the part of the world that we are talking about, and even in countries where laws and attitudes around sexuality and gender might have seemed increasingly liberal there has always been a risk of a ‘conservative’ backlash (I use the prefix ‘ultra’ because, up until recently the consensus around gay and trans rights in the UK seemed to go across the mainstream political spectrum).
In the UK, one of these was when Section 28 of the Local Government Act came into law in 1988, prohibiting schools from promoting “homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality”. Thankfully, that particular insidious piece of legislation was repealed in the early 2000s. However, after a couple of decades of apparent improvement (Single Sex Marriage, for example, and a growing awareness of trans lives and rights), the cultural warriors of the (mainly Christian) ultra-conservative Right* (who have never actually gone away or given up their fundamental beliefs in the ‘sin’ of homosexuality) turned their eye to the easy targeting of trans and gender non-conforming lives, and the simplistic and erroneous championing of their simplistic interpretation of ‘biological sex’ as a fundamental human reality.
* Note: I use the prefix ‘ultra’ because, until recently, the consensus around gay and trans rights, in the UK at least, seemed to go across the mainstream political spectrum).
The result, in the UK at least, was a 2025 High Court ruling that has set back our understanding of gender, sex and culture by several decades, and will adversely affect the lives of a high proportion of this already marginalised and often misunderstood community. And how this plays out in the USA in the context of the Trumpist GOP’s proto-fascist rampage through democratic norms is anyone’s guess.
Yet, on another level, it is all so simple. The queer community, with ‘trans’ clearly the ‘T’ within LGBTQI+, is creative and resilient and much of our great music and art emerges from within it, and from queer allies (artists and listeners) who support the right of all humans to be… well human… in whatever ways feels right and authentic. That’s what my previous post was about (find it HERE) and so it’s not a bad time to be peeling back a bit of history to remind us all that – as the TRAИƧA project producers simply put it:
“Trans people have always existed…”
The TRAИƧA project itself emerged from the Red Hot Organisation that has a history of putting out music that supports LGBTQ+ causes and communities – including the first Red Hot and Blue album in 1990 during the AIDS crisis. Red Hot founder, John Carlin, puts it like this:
“When we were putting together Red Hot and Blue, a generation of people were upset by homophobia and AIDS, and needed a lightning rod to put their energy into. I’m hoping that’s what Transa is – that there’s a large group of people who are appalled by transphobia and the way right wing politicians are using it to anger their base. And they’ll stand up and focus. They’ll say, ‘I want to push on the other side. There are more of us than there are of them.’”
To explore a little more about TRAИƧA before I dive into the tracks, here are the producers themselves, Dust Reid and Massima Bell talking about the origins and vision of the project, and setting the context for the wonderful music to come…
Listening to TRAИƧA
After dipping in to the music in the project over a few months since coming across it, I had a chance to listen to full TRAИƧA album, in one sitting, on a car ride recently. It was a five hour journey and I worked out that, with stops, I would have the time and, hopefully, the attention to take it all in. However, it is a very long listen – so I used as inspiration Polly Paulusma’s words about the place of ‘long-form’ in a world that is all about TikTok videos and streaming:
“I won’t hear all this talk that we can’t concentrate for more than 30 seconds any more. We sit down and we binge on box sets for hours, compulsively. We can handle long form.”
She was writing in the liner notes of her own recent ‘long form’ album, Wildfires, that comes in at just over 2 hours. She is right; it might take some concentration and discipline but, when it’s good, a long-form piece – a double or even triple album – can turn out to be an epic listen. Wildfires certainly is. However, TRAИƧA is a GIANT. 231 minutes. 46 tracks. Eight ‘chapters’. The vinyl boxset runs to six records!
Long-form or not, however, the prospect was a little daunting! Although I was excited by many of the artists on the album, I was also aware of my experience of compilation albums – even single discs with a dozen or so songs on them. They can sometimes feel contrived and bitty, and the quality can really vary. Basically, just because an artist has released a great song or album, it doesn't mean I’m going to like the one they’ve done for a themed album. Usually these collections include cover versions too, and this genre can also be decidedly mixed.
I shouldn’t have worried. The album (the word sounds too small for such an immense undertaking) is extraordinary, moving smoothly from start to finish. For my part, I kept my discipline and my finger away from the 5 Live button for the whole journey! I think it helped that the curators Dust Reid and Massima Bell had such a vision for the piece, and put it together so carefully over the eight ‘chapters’ (see their explanation of this in the video above). The songs themselves are mostly sublime. There are standout tracks, of course, and my choices of these (which I’ll post in the article) will be entirely subjective, but the quality of the music never dips markedly, and the various styles of music blend with each other really well.
This two-part piece is an overview of the music in the project and some of my reflections on it. It won’t be entirely comprehensive or objective, but I hope it’ll act as a taster for you to go in and sample the album for yourself. Because of the length of the album, I’ve split the post into two parts. Part 1 (which follows below) covers chapters 1 - 4. Part 2 (to be published) will deal with chapters 5 to 8. There’ll be some footnotes and bonuses along the way, which you can find at the bottom of this post.
If you want some background, you can also check out my first article in the series entitled LGBTQ Plus plus plus, which puts TRAИƧA in the context of the wider history of LGBTQ+ music and culture, and the Red Hot Organisation in particular.
Listening to and purchasing the music
If you want some pre-selected highlights there is a five track TRAИƧA Select sampler vinyl record, which comes ‘packaged’ with the full digital album. It includes five highlight tracks including Young Lion by Sade Abu (see the first part of this piece for the video to that one or HERE on YouTube). It’s a good way to get hold of the full album and support the project, as the full 6 record vinyl box is a good bit more expensive! If you do want the full package though– a gorgeous and rare thing indeed – it’s available from https://shop.redhot.org
You can find the sampler vinyl + digital album HERE on Bandcamp.
There’s also a full album visualiser stream on YouTube, which will help you orient the TRAИƧA project:
The TRAИƧA project vision
That’s the shopping out of the way. Now the album itself. For this piece, I’m going to cover it in chapters (like on the album itself), offer you some reflections plus one or two sample tracks per chapter that will hopefully demonstrate the range and quality of the project. As a start, here’s a reminder of Red Hot’s vision for TRAИƧA:
It takes time for new worlds to be born – time and space and slow, sustained belief. It takes courage to grieve the worlds that died before this moment, and those that might have arrived but never did. TRAИƧA, the new compilation from storied activist music production organization Red Hot, spotlights the gifts of many of the most daring, imaginative trans and non-binary artists working today. It also softens the edges of the world we know, and invokes powerful dreams of the futures that might one day thunder from its cracks.
OK… Deep breath… here goes…
TRAИƧA, a 46-track prismatic spiritual journey: Chapters 1 - 4: Womb of the Soul; Survival; Dark Night & Awakening
Chapter I – Womb of the Soul
Right from the off, TRAИƧA sets out its intentions: to demonstrate the creativity and genius from within the queer and trans community, and the solidarity of straight artists with the lived experience of trans and non-binary people.
This first chapter marks the birth or conception of the idea, weaving the ambient mysteries of Midnight Moon Pool, with song lyrics by William Blake, into a version of How Sweet I Roamed by Jeff Tweedy (of Wilco) and composer, Clare Rousay and then to the gentle, dreamy beauty of Same Train, by Christian Lee Hutson and Heart Shaped (aka Kendall Bousquet).
The four songs in this section offer a beautiful introduction to the collaborative ethos of TRAИƧA, and hints at the joy, pain and lived experience of trans and non-binary folk in our times. My favourite track from Chapter 1 is You Don't Know Me and features Devendra Banhart, Blake Mills and the evergreen Beverly Glenn-Copeland, whose dignity and presence is right at the heart of this collection.
The track is a cover of the 1972 song by Brazilian singer and activist Caetano Veloso, who has also been involved with previous Red Hot projects. The TRAИƧA cover of the song is great, the repeated vocal building slowly then opening into a slow skuzzy guitar riff, building and then falling away to Glenn-Copeland’s spoken words – including fragments of a Rumi poem – and then back to Caetano Veloso’s refrain that both invites and challenges us.
Note: I’ve included the original Veloso version as a bonus in the footnotes. It’s a stunning piece of music, one I’d never come across before!1
You don't know me Bet you'll never get to know me You don't know me at all Feel so lonely The world is spinning round slowly There's nothing you can show me from behind the wall
Chapter II – Survival
Trans people have always existed, is the strapline to the TRAИƧA project, yet still their existence is denied and undermined. There’s so much that could be said about the misinformation and erroneous assumptions behind the so-called ‘gender critical’ rhetoric and statutes in the USA, UK and beyond. Suffice to say that survival is and has always been a key strand of experience for trans people in their history, and it reflects the struggle that queer people more generally have faced, and still face in many places across the world. That’s why the letters are LGBTQI+ – because there’s a shared experience of suffering, resilience and survival…
Chapter 2 of TRAИƧA steps into the realm of survival – including the joy of collective being and the shared experience of becoming human; and so there are common themes and emotions running through these songs. It’s a really strong ‘chapter’ too, and I could have chosen any of these tracks to feature here.
It begins with a bridge track from chapter 1, STAR by intersex artist, Ana Roxanne and Nsámbu Za Suékama, who speaks a poem by trans activist, Marsha P Johnson. Then there’s a set of great indie tracks including Please Tell Me from Lightning Bug, Make 'Em Laugh by Benét and Faye Webster and Get Me Away From Here, I'm Dying by the prolific and excellent Julien Baker and friends.
Here, I’ve included two tracks from Chapter 2:
First, a beautiful cover of Kate Bush’s Deeper Understanding by indie royalty, Hand Habits (aka Meg Duffy) with Bill Callahan (aka Smog). It’s just such a gentle, intense version, with Bush’s insistent downbeat conversational greeting weaving throughout: “Hello, I bring you love and deeper understanding”…
Soooo good…
Second, I’ve included a new song from the album: Rumblin’, by Soft Rōnin (aka trans artist, Veronica Zw) and Frankie Cosmos (aka Greta Kline). The acoustic bedroom video version here is just so infectiously joyful, and reminds us that joy and friendship is always at the heart of survival – queer or other-than…
Chapter III – Dark Night
There were two inspirations for the TRAИƧA project according to the initiators of the project, Dust Reid and Massima Bell: “The two producers originally met at a video shoot in upstate New York, and immediately bonded over their shared love of Beverly Glenn-Copeland’s music, as well as a common devotional connection to nature.” Glenn-Copeland’s influence runs throughout TRAИƧA, and I’ll come back to his music later.
The second main influence they both cite for TRAИƧA was the dance producer SOPHIE. A revolutionary figure in her short career, SOPHIE was fast becoming a major figure in dance music when she died from a fall in 2021, aged 31. Her loss was felt deeply across musical and trans communities. Her first album, Oil Of Every Pearl’s Un-Insides is a classic, and contains the track that Anohni has called a ‘mistresspiece’, and which she (Anohni) and Moses Sumner cover for this chapter of the album, namely Is It Cold In The Water.
Both Sophie’s original (find it HERE) and this amazing cover are beautiful – and I’m also offering another bonus from SOPHIE in the footnotes: her mesmerising video of It's Okay To Cry, which I discovered a few years back, and still raises hairs on the back of my neck. I’d recommend seeking her out – and I’ve promised myself a catch up with her posthumous album, co-produced with her brother, Benny Long and put together with a host of collaborators and friends from her musical community.2
So, Dark Night is a chapter that has the tragedy of SOPHIE’s early death at its heart, but there are other tracks here that reflect the dark night theme beautifully. The first, Under the Shadow of Another Moon, sets the scene: a reading of an Eileen Myles poem by Hunter Schafer, set to the accompaniment of Cole Pulice’s magical saxophone layers. More ambience and whispered vocals follow from Lucy Liyou and Grouper (aka Liz Harris) on their haunting track, Blush. Then the pace and mood picks up a little with Anajah and Gary Gunn’s lovely cover of the Cocteau Twins' 1993 track, Know Who You Are At Every Age. Finally, non-binary artist Niecy Blue (aka Janise Robinson) and Joy Guidry complete the chapter with Is It Over Now?
Chapter IV – Awakening
Awakening begins with trans artist, Nina Keith’s composition Come Back Different featuring vocals from singer-songwriter Julie Byrne and Taryn Blake Miller (aka Your Friend). The track starts with a soundscape of voices, accompanied by what sounds like a church organ in the far background. It builds with Bjork-style microbeats and synths to a track that could find a place in a before-breakfast-rave. It’s a lovely thing…
You are good luck Don't need permission You are a mountain Come back different You are a miracle They'll never give in It doesn't matter You will outlive them We'll come back different
It segues into a truly original version of the Tim Buckley classic, Song To The Siren by Rachika Nayar feat. vocals by Julianna Barwick and Cassandra Croft. Then a stunning piece of jazz funk by Arthur Baker and the amazing Pharoah Sanders on sax, entitled Love Hymn, and featuring one hell of a band behind them (honestly this album is truly amazing, there’s so much quality on show!) And these aren’t even the tracks I’ve included in this chapter!
The final track in Chapter 4, that also appears on the sampler album, is People Are Small / Rapture by L’Rain (aka Taja Cheek), featuring voices from the NYC Trans Oral History Project: “a community archive devoted to the collection, preservation and sharing of trans histories, organized in collaboration with the New York Public Library”. I think it’s fair to say that the Trans Oral History Project is another touchstone of TRAИƧA, which is all about giving voice to this global community.
This 9 minute epic is a reworked version of two songs by Anohni: Rapture – one of her best known – together with the shorter, less recognisable People Are Small,3 woven together by L’Rain, and interspersed by recorded fragments of trans people speaking movingly about their lives.4
However, the longest track (and perhaps the strangest!) on the whole TRAИƧA project is by the enigmatic André 3000, snappily entitled Something Is Happening And I May Not Fully Understand But I’m Happy To Stand For The Understanding.
Back in 2023, André 3000, the former rapper with Outkast, made a massive left turn by releasing an improvisational flute-based album, New Blue Sun (another long-form piece running to 87 minutes), to much acclaim and no little confusion. This track is a companion piece to that album. It is 26 minutes long, and takes up the entire second side of the TRANSA sampler LP! Like New Blue Sun it takes a little while to get into, but I think it’s an intriguing, absorbing piece of work. As someone who has been exploring the independent electronica scene in recent months, it has a similar hypnotic, rhythmic feel to it that holds me in – but it’s way funkier than most music in that genre – which isn’t surprising given it’s the frontman of Outkast we’re talking about!
According to the notes on YouTube version: “This piece is comprised of two separate, overlaying, intertwining recordings. The main piece that is running throughout was a Quartet of André, Carlos, Deantoni, and Nate, recorded at Groove Masters in Santa Monica. The piece that comes in and out was a Sextet recording of André, Carlos, Diego, Matthew David, Shabaka, and V.C.R, recorded at Shangri-La, with Maia added later, during one of the mixing sessions.”
If you don’t hear it here, you might have missed it, so I’m posting it below. It’s an entirely unique and brilliant piece of work, and a welcome contribution to TRAИƧA, by an artist who has played with gender aesthetics in the past, and been criticised for it by some, but has increasingly become a queer ally in recent years.
That’s your lot for part one of this extended two-part article on the TRAИƧA project…
Coming soon…
TRAИƧA, a 46-track prismatic spiritual journey, Part 2: Chapters 5 - 8: Grief; Acceptance; Liberation; Reinvention.
Notes and bonus tracks
The original version of You Don’t Know Me is by Brazilian artist and political activist, Caetano Veloso, who is considered one of the all time greats of popular music. It is taken from his 1972 album, also called Transa (translated as ‘Lovemaking’ from the Portuguese). Veloso has been involved a number of Red Hot projects over the years, as well as releasing upwards of 30 studio albums.
SOPHIE, dance music pioneer, DJ and producer, died tragically at the age of 31 after only one full length album, the excellent Oil Of Every Pearl’s Insides and this track, It’s Okay To Cry opens it. It’s such a vulnerable piece of work, a beautifully filmed video and an excellent song with a touch of Taylor Swift about it - which is a massive compliment, by the way. Her second posthumous album, SOPHIE, was produced by her brother, Benny Long, and features a host of other collaborators. It came out last year, and you can find it HERE.
People Are Small is a little known Anohni track that comes from an excellent 2023 re-release of a series of recordings from the early 90s entitled Blacklips Bar: Androgyns and Deviants - Industrial Romance for Bruised and Battered Angels, 1992–1995. Also on that collection is an earlier version of Rapture from the one that appeared on Anohni’s debut album in 2000. Below is the Bandcamp link to the full Blackcaps Bar album, and to help get you orientated to the L’Rain track on TRAИƧA, you can find the Blackcaps Bar version of Rapture, HERE on YouTube and People Are Small below:
The New York City Trans Oral History Project: is a community archive devoted to the collection, preservation and sharing of trans histories, organized in collaboration with the New York Public Library. Find their website at https://nyctransoralhistory.org - it’s an invaluable resource for the queer and trans community in these most challenging of times, and a source of education for allies:
Our archive documents transgender resistance and resilience in New York City. We work to confront the erasure of trans lives and to record diverse histories of gender as intersecting with race and racism, poverty, dis/ability, aging, housing migration, sexism, and the AIDS crisis. We privilege the insights of vulnerable trans communities fighting the structural dismantling of public benefits, housing insecurity and homelessness, policing, and surveillance.
Recorded interviews with trans New Yorkers are accessible via major listening platforms. We welcome new contributions from volunteer interviewers and narrators; our handbook provides history, context, and training for those interested in participating and learning more about the role of oral history in community activism. Anyone who identifies as trans / gender non conforming and as a sometime resident of New York City is invited to contribute an interview. All interviews are accessible to the public and part of the Creative Commons license for free and open use. Most of our interviewers are transcribed. We use an expansive tagging system to identify keywords and terms.
We are a volunteer organization, founded in 2014 through deep conversation with community organizations. We are grateful to a broad network of peer to peer interviewers, and many others who have donated their time and experience to build the archive. Over the years our project has flourished from the support and participation of many volunteers and core organizers. Our project has been supported by partnerships with the New York Public Library and the Digital Transgender Archive and by funding from the Trans Justice Funding Project.