It’s a bright, cloudless afternoon in February and cool winter sun pools around Orgena Rose as she reclines into her chair and crosses her legs. The producers whisper anxiously to each other about how to angle the cameras. Gena smiles: “Are you getting my boots in the shot? I only wore them for you.” Glamorous and at ease, she puts others at ease. We’re on a set in a rehearsal room backstage in the Bristol Old Vic, but we could just as easily be in Gena’s living room. She’s welcomed us into her home: the places where art gets made.
What kind of art? The simple answer is every kind of art. As a vocalist, Gena has performed everywhere from Carnegie Hall in New York to the Royal Opera House in London. She’s starred in Broadway musicals and independent British theatre and even written her own plays. She has both acted in and written music for films, appeared on Oprah, Conan, NPR and on the BBC and also works as a vocal coach and choir director; directing choirs for Disney as well as numerous community groups. In Bristol, she directs the Women’s Voice choir, Sing Out! (the Southwest’s largest LQBTQ+ choir) and was a former Director of the Windrush Choir, which she once led on the Pyramid stage at Glastonbury.
“Glastonbury!” Gena relishes all four syllables of the word in her indulgent, almost old-Hollywood accent. “That was a dream come true that day. I actually found that being a part of the Windrush Reggae Choir, I felt like I had found family over here. Being connected to the community, being so embraced by the community. I felt that I belonged and I felt that I had found home away from home. And being able to honour some of those actual generations who had come from the Windrush on the stage! That was just a real moment. Especially because I have Caribbean roots of my own, being a Creole woman. So there was a real connection point for me.”
Gena is a natural Bristolian in many ways. “I first arrived in Bath,” she says, sitting up straight and smirking, “which was all very, very… different. And it’s gorgeous. And then after about a few minutes you just kind of go, ‘And now what?’. So I just found myself continually coming to Bristol.” She’s performed in beautiful concert halls on both sides of the Atlantic, but pomp is not for her. What matters to Gena is the way music brings people together: “It’s about all of us. With any choir I’ve ever led, it’s always about getting everybody to sing, getting everyone to recognise: Yes you have a voice, yes you can sing! I’ll help you! I will share what I know, because I know what it’s like to be disempowered.”
Education has always been a crucial aspect of Gena’s practice. When she first began to sing, she was told by her choir director that her voice wasn’t good enough. “And that really could have been crushing. But thankfully I had been given some other messages from my godmother, who told me, almost on a daily basis, ‘You can do anything you put your mind to’. And what I learned from that is, you just have to learn. And so, as part of my own career in performing, I’ve always been committed to helping train other singers.”
Overcoming disempowerment features heavily in Gena’s uplifting lyrics and powerful pop beats, unfortunately because it has featured heavily in her life. “Being all of who I am, African-American lesbian woman, I myself have had to empower myself to be able to do all that I’ve done.” Her musical sources are icons and divas for sure, but icons of a certain kind. Speaking of the inspiration for her upcoming tribute show, ‘Tina Turner ON!’, Gena pauses, enraptured: “Talk about stepping out in strength and in power to do what you need to do, after almost being obliterated. To then rise like a phoenix through all of that and become this world figure and this symbol to women that says, ‘You can do it. Get up! Stand up!’”
The stories of the women Gena channels when she sings are central to her performances because they are central to Gena herself. “I, like Tina and unfortunately so many other women, have gone through incredible challenges. Literally I was actually kidnapped as a child, as a baby. Had pneumonia twice, almost didn’t make it. Was adopted, went through lots of places of living and endured, unfortunately, lots of different kinds of abuses. To overcome that and still have a sense of love – of unconditional love – truly comes from my godparents, Willard and Lucille Evans.” Love. It’s the word emblazoned all over her red, flowing, asymmetrical dress. But Gena Rose doesn’t only champion love in her music. Her WILU fund has worked for years with various charities and non-profits to uplift children, teens, and young women who have been abused, neglected or homeless. “So that’s where WILU comes from, Willard and Lucille.”
In a sense, activism has always been in Gena’s blood. “Because it’s literally in my name: Orgena. And that means ‘empowerment’. It was a name from the civil rights movement in the United States.” I ask Gena, who’s worked across numerous artistic disciplines and media forms all over the world, what is it that binds all of her projects together? “There is this common thread that’s quite surprising for me, because that common thread is history. But history in that it’s relevant today,” Gena starts to laugh, “Which is really ironic, ‘cause I hated history in school.” Gena was recently in a production of ‘The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks’, the true story of a young, Black mother whose cancer cells were used without her consent to develop the first immortal cell line. “This is a woman who lived for real and changed the face of the medical industry. Every one of us who’s had a vaccine owes it to Henrietta Lacks. And most of the world doesn’t know who she is?” She’s also starred in Broadway revivals of musicals such as Ragtime and Jelly’s Last Jam, the story of jazz legend Jelly Roll Morton. “Ragtime is still relevant today! Dealing with racism and facing that head on. And it did it in a brilliant way, through the music.”
Gena’s sense of history as something living, something needed in the present to create a different future, forms a core principle of her work as an artist and an advocate for social justice. But, for Gena, an often overlooked element of this advocacy is the need for artists to advocate for themselves. “Artists need to be paid, period. It is a profession. We study, we get education, we didn’t pop out of the womb and just do this. Whether its mechanics, doctor, lawyer, whatever, no one goes around saying, ‘Will you do this for free? Will you do your job for free?’” She interrupts herself with a long sigh, Tina turned Karl Marx: “I worked at this one place and they wanted to pay me $80. For a day’s work. They were paying my white, male counterpart $500. I’d already been on Carnegie, Broadway, toured internationally. That’s when I said enough is enough. I’m ending SAD: Starving Artist Disorder.” It’s Gena’s commitment to fair pay for artists that brought her and the Diverse Artists Network together: “They are part of shifting this conversation. They are about helping artists to be paid, to be recognised.”
Gena’s work with DAN began at the 2024 DIASPORA! Fest, leading her One Love choir and writing the theme song for the festival, which has now been commissioned to be fully produced by Devine Evans, known for his work with such artists as Beyonce, Rihanna, Lady Gaga, Janet Jackson, Alicia Keys, Justin Timberlake and now Orgena Rose. Gena will be interviewing Devine Evans for the first ever episode of her new podcast, Global Artists Spotlight. “We’re connecting as artists around the world, and it’s a really beautiful thing.”
Written by Charli (they/them). Charli is a literary critic, researcher and writer originally from London. They study queer experimental literature and art from 20th century to present. In addition to completing their Masters, they have presented research at academic conferences and been published in University of Bristol’s Student Research Journal.
Charli is interested in bridging the gap between academic and practical approaches to understanding creativity and social justice. They began working with RISE in 2024 at We Out Here festival and have since interviewed a number of creatives in collaboration with initiatives such as Diverse Artists Network and Compass.
This interview is a collaborative production by Diverse Artists Network and RISE Collective as part of the Artists Spotlight series. This series aims to showcase the diverse talents and creative journeys of artists across Bristol and the South West. This initiative aligns with both organisations’ commitment to promote diversity, representation, and inclusivity within the arts.
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