When the sprawling compilation album “Transa” came out last fall, Massima Bell — a musician, model and activist who helped assemble the project under the aegis of the Red Hot organization — thought of it as a crucial act of “archive-making” for one of society’s most marginalized communities.
“As a whole, trans people have not had the opportunity to really have our own historical understanding of who we are,” Bell says. “It’s something that’s been literally stamped out over the course of the Western gender binary that emerged from the Victorian era.”
With 46 tracks by approximately 100 artists — including many trans and nonbinary musicians along with big names such as André 3000, Jeff Tweedy, Clairo and Perfume Genius — “Transa” sets down intimate stories of experience and allyship so that they might be “honored and remembered and live far beyond the present moment,” as Bell puts it.
Among the album’s varied highlights: Teddy Geiger and Yaeji’s dreamy folk-pop “Pink Ponies”; a rendition of Prince’s “I Would Die 4 U” by Lauren Auder and Prince’s old bandmates Wendy & Lisa; Allison Russell and Ahya Simone’s take on “Any Other Way” by the 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 earlier than she did.
“Young man, it’s been so heavy for you / You must have felt so alone / The anguish and 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 its archive to life at the Getty Center on Saturday with a daylong “Transa” event featuring films, art installations and a concert with performances by Geiger, Devendra Banhart and Dirty Projectors’ David Longstreth, among others.
The takeover is the latest bit of cultural activism by the not-for-profit Red Hot, which made its name during the AIDS epidemic with 1990’s “Red Hot + Blue,” a hit compilation LP that had stars like U2, Sinéad O’Connor and k.d. lang interpreting the songs of Cole Porter; after that came similarly buzzy benefit albums 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’s co-founder, John Carlin, compared recent attacks on trans people to the treatment of people with AIDS in the ’90s. “We’re doing this to make sure the culture wars are being fought from both sides,” he said of “Transa.”
Yet the Getty event is billed explicitly as a celebration. Geiger, who is trans and whose career encompasses her own records as well as songwriting and production work for the likes of Pink and the Chicks, says “Transa” embodies “the idea that trans lives, which inevitably become politicized, are about more than struggle.”
Sumney, a singer and actor seen in “MaXXXine” and HBO’s “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, “minoritized identities are asked to speak for their entire identity. But that responsibility impedes the ability to speak for themselves.”
For Bell, the promise of “Transa” — in its acts of testimony 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 inside all of us.” Says the activist: “Trans people are just trying to live our lives.”
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