When Red Hot producer Dust Reid and artist and activist Massima Bell began putting together the ambitious concept album Transa (styled TRAИƧA) in 2021, they couldn’t have imagined that its release—several years later, in November 2024—would coincide with the reelection of Donald Trump, and, not unrelatedly, one of the biggest spikes in anti-trans policy and rhetoric in recent memory. Now, to listen to the project, which features more than 100 artists (among them, Adrianne Lenker, André 3000, Anohni, Hunter Schafer, Perfume Genius, and Sade Adu) feels like a small yet potent act of rebellion, holding up the creative genius that trans, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming musicians have been offering to the world for generations.
This week, Vogue spoke to Bell (whom eagle-eyed fashion obsessives might recognize from Nan Goldin’s recent Gucci campaign) about releasing Transa on the precipice of a second Trump presidency, honoring the legacy of Sophie, witnessing Sade’s powerful love and support for her trans son, and creating art that aims to make trans people feel “wanted and adored.”
Vogue: How does it feel to officially have the album out in the world?
Massima Bell: It’s so beautiful. This project has been, at least for me personally, such a love letter to and for and by the trans people in my life and beyond, and it’s been such a beautiful thing for all these people to kind of take a little bit of refuge in. That’s been really, really special and precious.
Does the release of the album feel different than you’d expected?
We started this project in 2021, before the rise in anti-trans hate rhetoric and anti-trans legislation in the US. We didn’t start the project from a place of responding to that; we really wanted the project to center love and celebration of the of the trans community and all the gifts that we as trans people bring to the world. The fact that it has come out now, at this kind of cliff’s edge in terms of what we can expect in the next year…even just from what I’ve seen already, in terms of how people are responding to this project, it feels like something people need to have in the world, particularly right now. We couldn’t have anticipated it happening in this moment, but it feels like it couldn’t have come at a more needed time. I’m really grateful that we could make it happen through this organization Red Hot, which has always done things in a way that’s more radical than how I’ve seen these kind of benefit projects or institutional charities do things in the past.
