RED HOT ORG - TRAИƧA

Cis-intro

Unfortunately it's true: the Olympics have never been a purely sporting matter, ever since the 1936 edition held under the watchful eye of Adolf Hitler. But the last couple of events — Tokyo 2020 and Paris 2024 — have taken a particularly ignorant and whiny turn, once again betraying the true symptoms of the times we live in. Disguised as a crusade for fairness in sport — a conversation that's already far more interesting and nuanced in itself, when handled with the proper expertise — the so-called "transgender issue" is cyclically and mercilessly twisted into a corollary of anxieties and phobias, stoking a resentment ready to be channeled, along with the rest of the general discontent, into votes at election time.
A strategy that's certainly nothing new for any fascist tendency; yet one has to wonder how such a small and frayed community, often pushed to the furthest margins of visibility, can at the same time represent such a gigantic bogeyman capable of bringing down the West. Are the members of this tiny community really all dangerous skull-crushing boxers? Why do they always have to go pee in public restrooms — can't they just use a shewee like lesbians do when camping? (cit. Reddit)

In partial response to the above, but in truth opening up a much wider and deeper dialogue free of outside opinions, the charitable organisation Red Hot Org has put together one of its most ambitious projects ever this year: gathering the musical testimonies of over a hundred artists, spread across eight records for forty-six tracks in total. It's a kind of "map" of the trans and non-binary experience in all its many forms and shades, ideally arranged through eight chronological stages: birth in the womb of the soul, survival, the dawning of awareness during a dramatic dark night, then awakening, grief, acceptance, liberation and finally reinvention. A long and tortuous process, made of pain and euphoria, rage and silence, but aimed at reclaiming that humanity which might otherwise seem lost. The listening experience is also split into two tonal keys, light and dark: each chapter is introduced by a meditative moment featuring a spoken voice (dark), the thematic beacon followed by the rest of the contributions, often presented in a more conventional song format (light).
The result is a giant tapestry of covers and original songs, made up of folk sketches and avant-jazz outbursts, indie-rock strumming and ambient dust clouds. Many of the artists involved are trans or non-binary, many others joined in solidarity, some with wider fame – Sade, André 3000, Jeff Tweedy, Wendy & Lisa – others better known to the indie readership of webzines like OndaRock itself.
Don't try to get through the listen in one sitting, the goal isn't to finish the story as quickly as possible; instead, try to empathise with the journey, discovering its common threads, in order to finally grasp the value of such a precious and singular experience.

Disc 1 – Womb Of The Soul – The Womb of the Soul

It could only begin with the waves of the sea, with the deep voice of Jamal Shakeri and the strings of Mary Lattimore and Laraaji: "Midnight Moon Pool" is the soft, safe womb we all come from, an enveloping ambient fantasy in which to breathe in the last glimmer of security, waiting for birth to bring with it the first universal trauma. The childhood that follows often gives moments of intimate sweetness, but is never free of dark omens, especially once we reach that first encounter with the outside world and its arbitrary rules. A complex knot of feelings, described here through three shifting, folk-rooted songs; the playfully lopsided psychedelia of "You Don't Know Me", with Devendra Banhart, Blake Mills and the ever-present Beverly Glenn-Copeland, then the miniature music box of "How Sweet I Roamed", by Jeff Tweedy and claire rousay, and finally the enchanting pastoral acoustic of "Same Train", the swift close of a chapter that is already shedding tears over its own lost innocence.

Disc 2 – Survival – Survival

The subtle synths of Ana Roxanne and the unrestrained voice of poet Nsámbu Ze Suékema introduce the concept of survival with a touch of defiance: "STAR" is the desire to burst and reach for the stars, to escape that oppressive sense of being out of place, even without yet having a plan to follow. "Please Tell Me", "Make 'Em Laugh" and "Rumblin'" then make up the body of a chapter animated by prickly emotions and indie-rock rawness, with guest artists of the calibre of Faye Webster and Frankie Cosmos leading the ceremony from their own idealistic dorm room.
But the centrepiece is "Get Me Away From Here I'm Dying", reworked here by no fewer than four artists: the famous Belle And Sebastian song is one of the purest portraits of adolescence ever committed to tape, resonating across generations of sensitive, confused young people – it's no coincidence that the Scottish band has always drawn a notable queer following, a category that, more than any other, feels the need to escape in order not to die during adolescence.
In 1989, Kate Bush released "Deeper Understanding", a curious song about the often emotional communion between man and machine – in her case, a computer at the dawn of the technological age. Here, Bill Callahan and Hand Habits offer a subtle, cryptic version, hinting at how this "deeper understanding" might also stand for an inner dialogue, an attempt to distinguish and reorder the various parts of one's own "self". The die is cast: I press execute.

Disc 3 – Dark Night – The Dark Night

A sobbing spoken word piece from actress Hunter Schafer over a twisted jazz backdrop brings the collection's first moment of true pain, deepened by the gaseous post-rock prolapse of the following "Blush", courtesy of Grouper and Lucy Liyou. The night is now dark, pitch dark. There's no more innocence, ignorance or complacency left to hide behind, despair is inevitable. "Is It Cold In The Water", a key song in the poetics of the late SOPHIE, is reworked by Anohni and Moses Sumney into a creeping bassline and falsettos full of feminine uncertainty: it's the fear of the unknown, of revealing oneself as one truly is and being left exposed to the cold and the storms of what's to come, violence included.
But even the darkest night has its moths; Anajah and Gary Gunn pick up an old Cocteau Twins theme, "Know Who You Are At Every Age", with hands of synthetic gossamer, and the exhortation couldn't be more literal. Then, like ghosts in the fog, Niecy Blues and Joy Guidry raise a devastating plea against that dark sky weighing down like a reinforced-concrete vault: "Is It Over Now?", is it over now?

Disc 4 – Awakening – The Awakening

If you thought "TRAИƧA" would be an easy or linear journey, think again. Across a full twenty-six minutes of menacing digital sludge and rain-soaked ambient-jazz calls, it's none other than André 3000 himself leading a first, painful and exhausting awakening: "Something Is Happening And I May Not Fully Understand But I'm Happy To Stand For The Understanding" carries with it the humble admission of one's own ignorance in the face of a vast, still-unknown and arduous path – one that is now, however, worth taking – the track's ending drifts straight out of earthly orbit to reconnect with the spirit of Sun Ra.
After such a brooding journey, here at last comes the euphoria of that first sunrise, of that first alignment between body and spirit; "Come Back Different" unfurls into the ether over a spacious ambient-house pulse, this reworking of the famous "Song To The Siren", courtesy of Rachika Nayar, Julianna Barwick and Cassandra Croft, feels like a northern lights display of angelic voices wrapping you in a maternal embrace.
Then comes a sudden shard of energy: "Love Hymn", in which renowned hip-hop producer Arthur Baker rewinds Pharoah Sanders's sax into a hypnotic whirl of concentric vortices, shaking off any trace of drowsy inertia. The chapter fittingly closes with "People Are Small/ Rapture", which gathers voice fragments from the "NYC Trans Oral History Project" (Imara Jones, Mojo Disco, Ceyenne Doroshow) and blends them with an immortal anthem drawn from "Antony And The Johnsons", sung here by L'rain.

Disc 5 – Grief – Grief

Moor Mother & Jlin arrive in a rush over a tearful synthetic bed, ready to claim their place in history, whether that means the memories of Stonewall or the racial injustices that certainly don't spare the trans experience – if anything, they often strike it with double force. That's because awakening is hardly the end of the journey; in fact the journey truly begins now, once you've stepped out of the stupor of your own bed, naked before the world, day after day.
But this time, alongside the grief of losing one's own past, there's an undercurrent of maturity in facing the choices made; "My Name" offers one of the finest collaborations in the whole tracklist, between Kara Jackson, Dave Longstreth and harpist Ahya Simone, then Perfume Genius and Alan Sparhawk put real feeling into their rework of the weighty "The Point Of Disgust", originally by Low.
These are followed by "In Another Life", "Pink Ponies" and "A Survivor's Guilt", three brief pop-folk singer-songwriter episodes looking back at a lost past and the need to find the strength and the words to face one's present – accompanied by nothing but piano, Yaya Bey's crystalline voice adds a melodic r&b touch.

Disc 6 – Acceptance – Acceptance

Perhaps the hardest chapter, because it's the most solitary one, requiring constant work on oneself. How many times have we listened to Sinéad O'Connor's "Feel So Different" with tears in our eyes, especially today in light of her untimely passing? Ezra Furman and Sharon Van Etten sing a musically faithful version, but one that carries the lyrics into a new context:

I'm not the person that I was before
I thought that nothing would change me
[…]
I'd never seen freedom before
And I never expected to
[…]

This is where the work becomes intimate and tender, musically slow and pastoral, taking on new folk shades, giving time to soothe the scars, whether internal or etched onto the skin; we get the soothing piano cascades of "Mourning Dove", the Spanish-sung cumbia of "Querube", a touching duet between banjo and harp on "Any Other Way", and then even Adrienne Lenker, who with "Feel Better" offers an embrace only she could give, all of them loving sketches woven with threads of wisdom and poetry. There's also a choral rendition of an old Judee Sill song, "Down Where The Valleys Are Low", and one by saxophonist Charles Lloyd, "TM", reworked here with Fleet Foxes among others.

Disc 7 – Liberation – Liberazione

Trans people have always existed

That's how Kelela introduced the release of "TRAИƧA", reminding the world that certain identities aren't passing trends — if anything, it's the ongoing succession of ever-larger economic and social structures that keeps narrowing the individual's expressive scope with new rules each time; "Within Without" is her introductory poem to a chapter that is finally beginning to shake off its shackles. While "Aaron" and "Many Ways" offer two free-ranging indie digressions on this new identity still waiting to be explored, the project's three guest divas — Moses Sumney, Sam Smith and Lyra Pramuk — deconstruct, with an electro-gospel attitude, "You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)" by the Queen of Disco par excellence, Sylvester. The disco truly arrives with "I Feel Free", courtesy of Sparkle Division (the dance project of William Basinski) and vocalist Pepper MaShay.

Still, the track with the widest appeal is "Young Lion", the most unexpected addition to the tracklist: over a thread of piano and brushed drums, Sade Adu alone, without the rest of the band, offers an apology and pays tribute to her trans son, Isaac. It's a precious contribution even within such a vast collection, because it offers the rare perspective of a parent, another category often silenced amid the rest of the political noise. On the other hand, many years ago, it was Sade herself who wrote "The Sweetest Gift", a lullaby dedicated to her own child, then still in the cradle (the album was "Lovers Rock", from 2000); it's touching to note how, despite everything, the mother has kept alive that promise to protect her child at all costs.

Disc 8 – Reinvention – Reinvenzione

"Get Free", "Always": the time has finally come to reclaim one's own humanity, not merely as part of an oppressed subgroup, but as individuals with their own inclinations and aspirations, with impulses toward personal passions and maybe the same old bad temper as ever, but also with a precious added perspective that enriches all of humanity. The final chapter of this long journey offers a mix of mystical calm and euphoria, in an attempt to embrace that sense of openness toward a future still waiting to be written. Here's the energetic glam guitar blast of "Surrender Your Gender", led by a spirited sextet of old-school nonconformists, then Wendy & Lisa inviting Lauren Auder to sing a skittering version of "I Would Die 4 U" by Prince. Driving along on a drum-machine groove, "Wolf Like Me", originally by Tv On The Radio, finds Bartees Strange, Kara Jackson and Anjimile joined in communion.

But the finale could hardly have been otherwise; with a perfectly calibrated contribution once again from Sam Smith, the octogenarian Beverly Glenn-Copeland picks up "Ever New" again, originally written for his fabulous "…Keyboard Fantasies…" in 1986, and colors it with chamber-music plucking and a touch bordering on the sacred. It's a hymn to new life, more necessary than ever, especially in times like these.

Trans-outro

If you're still here, then maybe some hope remains. Having reached the end of the journey, it becomes increasingly difficult to deny the humanity of these stories and situations — parallel lives that, on closer look, actually share a great deal in common with the rest of society. Is it really necessary to deploy so much violence against (jokingly quoting a dear friend of mine) "some poor bitch who has to shave every morning"?

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google

01/12/2024