Conjure Moon

Loaded with retrograde activity, has brought massive reconfigurations of life. The year opened on Mercury retrograde. February ushered us into eclipse season— an intense time of change.

• Is secularism sustainable?!
• La trahison au pouvoir (French Edition)!
• The First Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians (New Testament Collection Book 7).

And then just as we digested the eclipses, Venus stationed retrograde on March 4th only recently turning direct on April 15th. On April 9th, Mercury stationed retrograde too it will station direct on May 3rd, just following the Quarter Moon.

And, fortunately, the time has come to execute! Midway through steady, stable Taurus, the Sun sextiles Neptune in Pisces. A sextile suggests resources that are available to us, and this particular combo combines earth and water elements to deliver soothing healing qualities. Think of a luscious detoxifying mud bath that leaves your skin feeling soft and smooth.

The Moon in playful Leo signals a time to step up and step out in joy and abundance. This bewitching combo signals power, strength, and favorable blessings!

Waxing Quarter Moons urge us to course correct, handle curve balls, and eloquently redirect our focus as needed. There was third album in the series, Bad Mouth, which would eventually come out in Conjure, as the group would become known by the release of Cab Calloway Stands in for the Moon , was more of an institution than a set band proper. This album, Cab Calloway, features a core crew, comprising some of the finest jazz, funk, latin, and free-jazz musicians you could imagine at that time, and peppers the tracks with guest stars aplenty, not least Ishmael Reed himself.

That said, one of the great draws of Cab Calloway is that the music was composed and arranged by various members of the band, and will often feature those very musicians singing lead on their tunes, and beyond that, the record features four additional guest vocalists throughout.

With no track-by-track credit listing and so many singers, guitarists, percussionists, etc. Looked at another way, though, it gets you listening closely to the subtle shapeshifting between, and even within, songs.

You could say that with Reed, the gateway between the written and the spoken has been busted wide open, allowing safe passage in either direction. A talking book turns into singing. In fact, where I note the few dips and fallings-short of this album is where those buoyant and pugilistic rhythms are forced into and constrained within a boxy framework, rather than allowed to bubble and blossom of their own accord.

The black writer lies in the guts of old America, making readings about the future.