Can Sade, Sam Smith, and Hunter Schafer Open People’s Minds About Trans Rights?
It’s a sunny day in July, and the scene inside Gary’s Electric, a Brooklyn recording studio, is just as bright. Half a dozen musicians who all contributed to the upcoming compilation album Transa — an expansive celebration of trans people put together by the longtime music and healthcare nonprofit Red Hot Organization — are meeting each other here for the first time and immediately finding common ground. Some of the artists in the big room are trans; others are allies. The overall vibe is one of community.
After the hellos, everyone moves to the control room to listen to and talk about their contributions, some of which are avant-garde — electronic producer Time Wharp’s improvised collaboration with poet Elizabeth Glenn-Copeland, L’Rain‘s interpretation of two songs by Anohni with recordings from the Trans Oral History Project — and others are freewheeling, like singer Niecy Blues’ collaboration with bassoonist Joy Guidry on the transcendent “Is It Over Now?”
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Then one of the comp’s producers, Dust Reid, puts on a song very few people have heard: “Young Lion,” Sade’s first new song since 2018. After gentle piano, Sade Adu’s voice enters, singing, “Young man, it’s been so heavy for you/You must have felt so alone/The anguish and pain, I should have known.” As it becomes apparent that she is apologizing through the song to her son, Izaak, for not being more supportive of his trans identity, the musicians all look visibly moved.
“Just tonally, lyrically, thematically, I think it’s so powerful,” Kaye Loggins, a.k.a. Time Wharp, says when the song ends. “You never get that catharsis of your parent putting themselves where they were at the time [before you came out], realizing the mistakes and genuinely apologizing for them. I know personally that would mean a lot to me, so I’m biased, but it’s exceedingly rare to have that kind of understanding.” Everyone in the room agrees.
A couple of weeks after the listening session, Izaak Adu echoes those sentiments in an email to Rolling Stone. “I think that a song where a parent apologizes for misunderstanding their child can hold immense significance for the trans community,” he says. “For many individuals who are transgender, coming out can be met with misunderstanding and, at times, rejection. … I hope the song can offer a sense of comfort, validation, and a feeling of being seen and understood.”
With an election a few weeks away and the data-crunching site Trans Legislation Tracker reporting that 45 anti-trans bills passed this year alone in the U.S., there’s no better time for a little more understanding. And even though Reid and co-producer Massima Bell, an actress and model who is trans, didn’t have the election in mind when they came up with the idea for Transa, due out Nov. 22, they feel that the project has only gotten more important.
“It’s interesting that we started thinking about and working on this project maybe a year and a half before this conservative backlash really got steam,” Bell says on a call a week after the listening session. “It’s been really wild to be working on Transa under wraps, as this really violent rhetoric being spewed around the country. It’s definitely put a fire under us to really push forward with the project.”
Transa follows in the footsteps of the pioneering 1990 compilation Red Hot + Blue, which raised money for AIDS research with U2, Sinéad O’Connor, the Neville Brothers, and more of that year’s top acts covering Cole Porter songs. Subsequent Red Hot compilations have furthered the same goal through alternative rock, Tropicália, country, and Afrobeat music, among many other genres.
One difference between Transa and those earlier Red Hot comps is that the 100-or-so contributors span a dazzlingly wide range of musical genres and gender identities, making it the most diverse comp of its kind. Transa features recordings by easily recognizable artists — Sam Smith, Jeff Tweedy, Laura Jane Grace, Hunter Schafer, Clairo, Adrianne Lenker, Fleet Foxes, Julien Baker, Faye Webster, and André 3000, among them — as well as plenty of more underground and avant-garde acts like Beverly Glenn-Copeland, Yaeji, Claire Rousay, More Eaze, and L’Rain. As with previous Red Hot comps, the combination of well-known supporters of trans rights and contributions from people who might not be such obvious allies gives the project the potential to reach a wide audience. (The album will initially come out in full on streaming services; Transa: Selects, a distillation of highlights from the sessions, is available for pre-order on vinyl.)
The compilation’s organizers hope its 46 tracks, which add up to nearly four hours, will attract an audience as diverse as Transa’s contributors and invite understanding and appreciation of the trans community. “We need to look to trans people as leaders,” Bell tells Rolling Stone. “We need to give trans people their rightful due in society. And we need trans people to be integrated into society.”
THIS PROJECT’S SEED took root about three years ago, when Reid, who joined Red Hot a little over a decade ago, met Bell on a film set for a short in which Bell talked about her appreciation for nature. In between takes, Reid played songs by Julianna Barwick, Beverly Glenn-Copeland, and what he describes as “artists that I feel like gender-expansive people are really tuned into.”
They hit it off but didn’t start talking seriously about working together until after the 2021 death of avant-pop producer Sophie, one of the most prominent trans musicians of the past decade. “I was lamenting the gifts that the world was going to lose out on with Sophie,” Reid says. He had co-produced 2014’s Red Hot + Arthur Russell, and this new loss made him think of that comp’s honoree, the cellist, singer, and producer whose legend has grown since his 1992 death. “I just thought that Sophie prematurely passing was like losing Arthur Russell all over again,” he adds. “I feel like if Arthur was alive today, he’d be producing for all the best artists.”
After Reid reconnected with Bell, they borrowed the project’s name from pioneering Tropicália artist Caetano Veloso’s 1972 album, Transa (pronounced “trahn-sa”). Although the word has a very specific translation from Brazilian Portuguese, they redefined it as a verb: “to love with no limitations on gender expression.” Folk artist Devendra Banhart covered Veloso’s “You Don’t Know Me” from the original Transa album for this compilation with Blake Mills and a poem read by Beverly Glenn-Copeland. Reid and Bell created a narrative arc for the track list to reflect the journey to “transa,” including chapters about survival, grief, acceptance, and reinvention. When they reached out to artists, they’d simply ask if they wanted to send an original song or a cover.
One artist they thought might be difficult to reach was Sade, but then Reid remembered that saxophonist Stuart Matthewman, who plays in her band, had recorded sax for Red Hot + Arthur Russell. Bell wrote a personal letter to Sade in March 2023, and Matthewman delivered it to the artist in person.
“Dear Sade,” she wrote. “I’ve been living in my truth as a trans person for many years and have found much joy in my life because of it. … The support you’ve publicly given your son has been transformative. I know that I would have had an easier experience navigating my own coming out if my family could have seen examples of support like yours. I feel that you’re in a unique position to be able to help shape a narrative that supports and uplifts trans people.”
She wrote, “your voice would resonate so powerfully.” Sade’s management replied and said the artist was moved by Transa’s narrative framework and would send a song. But the Red Hot team wasn’t prepared for the emotional impact of “Young Lion.” “I was in tears because it just was so… Her voice felt so charged,” Bell says.
Another person who didn’t know what to expect from the song was Sade’s son. “Though there was nothing I needed to forgive her for, the lyrics, ‘Forgive me, son, I should have known,’ struck a chord,” Izaak Adu says. “My mum never tried to oppress the boy I silently always knew I was. She always let me be me.” Even though the song initially was a “letter” for his 21st birthday, he emphasizes, “I think the world must hear it.”
Sade’s participation also piqued other artists’ interests. She had read André 3000’s name on a list of possible contributors and asked if he’d committed yet, Reid recalls. They let André know that Sade had inquired about his participation in the new Red Hot project, which led him to get on an hour-long Zoom with Reid to learn more. The burgeoning avant-garde flautist (and legendary rapper) later sent in the 26-minute composition, “Something Is Happening and I May Not Fully Understand but I’m Happy to Stand for the Understanding,” which opens the compilation’s “Awakening” chapter.
OTHER MUSICIANS’ REACTIONS to Transa have been similarly positive. Mike Hadreas, who records pop music as Perfume Genius, heard about the project through other contributors who are his friends. “And then I heard Sade is doing it — what the fuck?” he says, approvingly, on a Zoom. “My head exploded. That’s fucking crazy.”
He thought Transa would be a good excuse to collaborate with one of his favorite bands, Low, on a new rendition of their heartrending 2001 song “Point of Disgust,” which opens with the lyrics, “Once, I was lost to the point of disgust.” “It’s a somatic thing,” he says. “I feel that song in my body, like an energy.” Low had originally committed themselves to the Transa project in its early days, but after singer-drummer Mimi Parker died of cancer in 2022, Reid and Bell took a step back as her husband, Low vocalist-guitarist Alan Sparhawk, grieved.
They reconnected about six months later and broached the idea of Hadreas collaborating with Sparhawk on a song. Hadreas ended up singing Parker’s part for the gauzy, surreal Transa rendition of “Point of Disgust.” “He sings it really beautifully,” Sparhawk says on a call. “Michael sings the song with pure love.”
Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman, members of Prince’s band, the Revolution, also revisited a song from their past for Transa: “I Would Die 4 U,” from Purple Rain. British singer-producer Lauren Auder, who is trans, had been working on a rendition of the tune, which fittingly opens with the lyrics, “I’m not a woman/I’m not a man/I am something that you’ll never understand.” Auder sings the words with conviction, and her interpretation is a little more dream-pop than Prince’s.
“When we heard what she was doing was not disrespectful at all to the material, it felt right for the message,” Melvoin says.
“I’d even venture to say that Prince would be intrigued by the vibe of it and the approach,” Coleman adds. “It’s very emotional.”
Folk artist Allison Russell recorded a rendition of the 1963 hit “Any Other Way” by the pioneering transgender R&B artist Jackie Shane. Shane’s life story has long resonated with Russell, who has been campaigning for the creation of a proper memorial to her in Nashville. Harpist Ahya Simone, who is trans, recorded the song with Russell, adding a light touch to the song’s hopeful message as Russell plays her banjo and leans into the emotion in the song’s lyrics.
For Russell, who describes herself as a “queer Black immigrant musician mom,” the project arrived at the right time. “I’m from Montreal but I live in Tennessee now,” she says over the phone. “We’ve just had wave after wave of legislative terrorism that particularly target our LGBTQ+ community, particularly trans people. It’s been a scary time. I think that’s partly why our interpretation of that song sounds the way it does.”
AN IMPORTANT PART of Reid’s and Bell’s goals for Transa was to give people hope. So they sought the participation of people they considered elders in the trans community — and they were pleased when Beverly Glenn-Copeland, who goes by Glenn for short, agreed to take part. “We don’t have that many trans elders, and that’s because it has been really hard to survive as a trans person, particularly in previous decades,” Bell says. “I’m really grateful that we can have Glenn be this kind of example.”
Glenn-Copeland, 80, began his transition in the mid-Nineties and started identifying publicly as trans in 2002. His career has spanned folk, jazz, ambient, and new age, and even though none of his albums have charted in the U.S., he has amassed a dedicated following in recent years. Last year, he released The Ones Ahead, his first full-length in nearly two decades, and he has been playing concerts on short tours. (He has announced plans to stop touring at the conclusion of his current run of dates, after doctors diagnosed him with dementia. He intends to continue creating art.)
At a packed Transa launch concert in Manhattan’s East Village on Sept. 28, Glenn-Copeland and his wife, Elizabeth, received a standing ovation from the approximately 450 attendees when they walked out. He looked both overwhelmed and proud as he took a seat to sing. During “Let Us Dance,” Elizabeth encouraged the audience to put their arms in the air, and Glenn started a call-and-response with the audience, who echoed his intonations. It created a warm sense of community. After the performance, fans were posting to social media that they had been moved to tears by the beauty of his four-song set.
One of Glenn-Copeland’s most moving performances that night was “Ever New,” the first song on his 1986 album, Keyboard Fantasies, which found a new audience when the City Editions record label reissued it in 2017. “Welcome to you both young and old,” he sang over piano at the concert. “We are ever new.”
Glenn-Copeland re-recorded the song for Transa with a lush chamber-pop arrangement and vocals by Sam Smith. “When I heard Sam’s voice, I thought, ‘Wow, check this out. It’s an angel singing over me,'” he says on a Zoom call with Elizabeth. “I wanted to adopt them.” He laughs.
“Everyone in the booth, we were all crying,” Elizabeth Glenn-Copeland says. “And Sam was just overcome. They said, ‘It’s such an honor for me to be here.'” The song and its message of rejuvenation closes Transa.
AFTER GLENN-COPELAND’S performance, several other Transa artists performed their contributions. Niecy Blues sang “Is It Over Now?” with Guidry, who used her time onstage to call on the community to support Black trans women. Bell introduced Aviva, a representative from the New York City Trans Oral History Project, to explain how that group is documenting an aspect of the city that was long ignored. (Recordings from the project feature in L’Rain’s Transa recording, a cover of Anohni’s “People Are Small/Rapture.”) And Time Wharp improvised avant-garde guitar volume swells over piano loops as author Nsámbu Za Suékama read and intonated a poem by the late gay-rights activist Marsha P. Johnson.
Each performance received rousing applause, but it was also notable that the audience consisted mostly of people who already believed in Transa’s cause. So the question remained, can a compilation like Transa open closed minds at such a crucial time in American politics?
“I think it’s possible,” Reid says, “but I think it’s going to be really difficult. … The people that this project really hits home for are going to be the leaders of the future. As far as today’s lawmakers, yeah, that’s going to be an uphill climb.”
Bell feels hopeful. “Maybe it can crack open just a little bit more compassion and understanding over time,” she says. “I think particularly with Sade’s song or the Sam Smith and Beverly Glenn-Copeland songs, I think we have the potential to crack the door open for people to have more compassion for trans people and just have more compassion, period.”
Izaak Adu also believes that the visibility potential of Transa can only be positive. “Ultimately, a compilation like Transa has the potential to promote greater visibility, representation, and awareness of the trans community, helping to create a more inclusive and understanding society for all individuals, regardless of their gender identity,” he says. “By sharing diverse perspectives and stories, Transa can contribute to a more inclusive and accepting world where everyone is valued and respected for who they are.”
Glenn-Copeland has no doubts. “I really believe that this compilation will appeal to many, many people from all walks of life, all variations of how they see themselves,” he says. “It has the potential to open minds. Because someone might say, ‘Give this a listen,’ to someone who is more closed, and it might just resonate.”
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