How Asian artists BB Sway, SuperKnova and Jake Zyrus are reclaiming narratives and tackling transphobia through music

Putting words to something so intimate and fluid as queerness is an adventure that has been intrinsically linked to music for all three artists. 

Zyrus, who started his professional singing career at 15 under the name Charice Pempengco and, who prior to transitioning in 2017, identified as a gay woman, explains that the more he evolved as an artist, the more he became in touch with his emotions and feelings: “Without music, I wouldn’t have been able to delve into my vulnerability so deeply. It allowed me to drown out people’s opinions about my transition.”

Writing and producing music is an introspective process—one that proved vital as the artists worked on understanding what they were going through and how to navigate it. “Transitioning is a beautiful journey I’m grateful for,” BB Sway, also known as Ash Johnston, tells Tatler when we meet him at the Eaton Hong Kong hotel. “But at the beginning especially, there was also a deep sense of loss that I needed to explore through words which eventually became the lyrics of my latest EP, How Will I Get There (2023)”

For SuperKnova, aka Ellie Kim, it was exploring her feelings through music that sparked the career she has today. “Music helped me so much during that time,” SuperKnova tells Tatler in a video call. “I was just supposed to be a guitarist, you know—that’s what I studied in college. But then I started writing songs to help me process my emotions about transitioning. They were just supposed to be for me, but a friend of mine found them good enough to be posted online. And here I am today.”

While writing can be cathartic, sharing the result with an audience—be it on streaming platforms or through live performances—can have very different implications. 

Coming out as trans is already a challenging experience in today’s world, let alone doing it while being a public figure. Data differs according to the region, but the United Nations universally recognises that “gender-diverse and trans people around the world are subjected to levels of violence and discrimination that offend the human conscience”. 

“Coming out as a trans man was extremely difficult, especially since I come from a conservative country [the Philippines],” Zyrus tells Tatler by email. “When I told people about my true self, some were supportive, but many were negative. This has been an ongoing struggle for me, as more visibility often means more opinions to face.” And while Zyrus has made peace with his past, he found navigating his audience “difficult, especially with the constant comparison between who I was before my transition and who I am now as Jake”. 

You might also like: Trans activist Henry Tse’s legal battle may have concluded, but his struggle for dignity continues 

As singers, musicians and performers, it isn’t possible to make a living while staying in the shadows. This means, though, that they must navigate their doubts, and physical changes—from experimenting with fashion and hairstyles to taking gender-affirming hormones and undergoing surgery— in front of a public that might not welcome it.

BB Sway, who started taking testosterone in February 2022 and underwent top surgery in May of the same year, finds himself in the midst of this dichotomy. When in England, he finds comfort in queer-friendly spaces and concerts. But performing in Hong Kong, where the culture is more conservative, has brought a lot of questions. “Performing spaces in Hong Kong are quite impersonal,” he says. “It used to be easy, but these days, my songs are about my transition, and given the debates that exist around trans people’s existence, I’m not sure how people will receive me and my music in Hong Kong, especially if they haven’t been previously exposed to much trans and queer culture.”

Similarly, SuperKnova was quite reluctant to release her music publicly at first, because she says she “didn’t think that people would listen to and would welcome music about transitioning”—an effect of internalised transphobia, she says. She also had to protect herself from external transphobia, including from her own parents, who she decided to cut off. 

Performing in public quickly became one of her favourite exercises: “Weirdly enough, being on stage in front of a large audience has been a safe space for me in a lot of ways,” she says. “It’s almost been like a practice for who I wanted to become in private. I could be weird, I could be experimenting with my physical appearance: I’m an artist, and it’s not strange for an artist to do so.”

One of the many joys of queerness, she says, is the ability to free oneself from existing boundaries and experiment with what hasn’t been defined. And that’s exactly the impact the LGBTQ+ community has been having on the music scene for decades.

From David Bowie to iconic music producer, songwriter, and DJ  Sophie: non-gender-confirming artists have long revolutionised the music scene; Zyrus, BB Sway and SuperKnova are contributing in their own ways too. The first step has been finding their voices—literally. 

For most musicians, once they have found their style and tone, they stick with it for the length of their career. But Zyrus and BB Sway had to start from the beginning again. “[Because I’m taking testosterone], my voice changed a lot, and despite me receiving mixed reactions to it, my passion remains unchanged,” Zyrus explains. BB Sway has had a similar experience. “It’s been a scary time for sure because I’ve spent most of my life singing,” he says. “Accepting that I won’t be able to sing the way I used to sing was very complex. But I also never felt that I had an option: my life is so much more than my singing voice. So I accepted very early on that I’d have to go through a period of grieving my old voice before finding my new voice.” 

SuperKnova, meanwhile, has found empowerment in this exercise. “I’m purposefully singing with a dark, lower voice,” she says. “I want to show that transwomen don’t necessarily have to sing—and speak—with a higher-pitched voice, which would conventionally be considered more feminine. That’s the beauty of music: I can blend these realities together.”

In everything they do in their careers, the trio are pushing boundaries, including in terms of the music itself. “I do find it difficult to categorise my music,” SuperKnova says, “because we live in a post-genre world, and because as a queer person, I hope I’m bringing a blurring element to categorisation and boundaries.”

BB Sway adds: “In the music industry, you’re kind of being forced to be consistent and categorise yourself. At this point in my transition, with my self-identity and voice changing rapidly, I’m very much aware that it is difficult to maintain a ‘consistent’ image at the moment. But artists are humans, at the end of the day, and we are all constantly evolving.”

“At the end of the day,” Zyrus concludes, “I just want to pursue my passion for music without any restrictions—whatever genres, or identity I identify as.”

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