12 Little Spells - (album review)

http://www.esperanzaspalding.com/12-little-spells/

Esperanza Spalding is a extremely talented woman. Erupting into the jazz scene over 10 years ago, she's recently declared to reinvent herself as an artist. Her project for this transition is 12 Little Spells, a musical experience intended to foster spiritual healing. Released shortly after my month at Esalen, this is my album of 2018. Just reading the tracklist, you get the sense that this album is one whole piece of music with an overarching story. And the purpose of this story is to connect you to your own body. Please read her own description of the project in the link above. And please watch her playlist on Youtube for an even richer experience: 12 Little Spells: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoCcJ3gwG3NRc_XVwvXAcry-bXDd1-zWE

Tracklist:

12 Little Spells

To Tide Us Over

Til the Next Full

Thang

Touch In Mine

The Longing Deep Down

You Have to Dance

Now Know

All Limbs Are

Readying to Rise

Dancing the Animal

With Others

The opening track evokes an overture, starting with orchestral sounds of brass, woodwind, and string. Esperanza sings an introduction, setting the listener up for a new age healing experience. It's not a straightforward song, neither are the 11 that follow.

The second track starts ephemeral, gradually building into a rising flow like the water under the moon. Finally the tide has come, she sings in a bluesy melody that only needed some time.

Third track opens with soft guitar and vocals describing sight. This is the first song to allude to the scientific picture of reality at the edge of comprehension. What follows is a ballad of taking in all the photons from the outside world and sending them to the heart. This song makes me reflect on the mirror-like nature of my perception. What I see and what is left unseen by my hollow eyeballs is magic that's sourced from within.

Track four opens with electric organ and acoustic guitar. This is one of the more straight ahead tracks, feeling like a gospel song. Sink into your thang, she sings. Your thang is, as I understand it, your tailbone. The base of your spine forms the root chakra. Sink into it and into your own individuality. This is one of the more danceable tracks, which is appropriate since your pelvis is what you shake when dancing, and even what you're engaging at all times, sitting still or moving.

Track five is a soft R&B ballad feel about touch. Feel the vibrational currents connecting you to the flow of being, feel the neurons responding to the surface interactions. It's really beautiful, both the song and the subtle sensations of touch.

Track six is a song I consider very powerful. It's confusing because she keeps singing about being in longing and belonging and the gut chakra. This is a chaotic jazz track in which she belts of how living is to be longing deep down inside is to be longing deep down inside is fucking hard to be longing deep down inside is to be... The point is that it's fucking hard to be longing, and at the same time, feel your own belonging. Deep down.

Number 7 is explicitly a dance track. You can never be too magical, she sings in this funky song with layers of vocal melody. It's pretty simple and the easiest song on the record to appreciate.

Track 8 brings the tempo back down. In this evocative song, she sings, "it's clear now, you're a beautiful vision now, appear!" She refers to the solarplexus, a chakra point associated with power. It's an inspirational song, and I don't feel the need to describe further.

Track 9 opens with piano and humming vocals. Another downtempo song, this time she sings questions of how to rise. Enigmatic, I can't offer much insight at this time.

The next song carries the listener's attention to the lower half in a more uptempo piece. It starts with dreamlike strings and vocals of rising, connecting to the previous song, before Esperanza sings from the legs' point of view. Legs are pretty powerful, the largest muscle group, capable of movement under virtually any circumstance. The legs are always ready to rise, even when you're feeling tired (blame the brain). They do, however, lament that airplanes cause our legs suffering beyond that we take for granted.

Track 11 is another special one, hitting different styles. Here, she sings about technology in contrast of the animal nature of humanity. Beginning with soft guitar and singsong vocals, she describes the power of information technology. She asks, have you prayed to your phone, for God today may very well be Google. "Google humanity but while you do, guard the animal within." Sounds like God the Animal. And while you keep searching for ghostly truths on the web, the animal in you guards the tangible in you. In an interlude, she pleads for a deity to relieve her inbox of emails (and show us how to fix the climate while you're here) only to find her search finds no results. I think the point here is that, "no service, page or pin, the program you came in with" deserves constant attention for it represents something technology can never replace.

The last track is my favorite because it's about love. She sings a story, initially wary of love. Sociology leads her to question power structures in relationships. A wailing saxophone in a halftime feel section evokes introspection as she waits for an answer and not the one she wanted to hear. Love is alluded but omitted in a chorus punctuated with sax solo licks. The promise. The knowledge. The soothing. What? The song breaks down into soft bridge. Esperanza sings of neurobiology leading her to conclude that the need for love is an instinctual response to stress in our animal brains. Now she questions how to meet her basic needs, conjuring the image of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Recall that loving relationships fall in the middle of the pyramid, as love is, after health and safety, crucial to well-being. Explicitly in this final chorus, she sings the answers. The sax still rips but subdued lest it obfuscate the message. Love the promise of love. Love the knowledge of love. Love the soothing of love.

Together, 12 Little Spells inspires peace, confidence, respect, and love for the self and all. I'm extremely happy that Esperanza Spalding has gone in this direction. Music has strong healing potential, and personally, I question the efficacy of sound healing bowls. This, however, will definitely make you feel better.

Healing comes from within. Medicine and therapy don't heal. They facilitate, either by reducing suffering that inhibits healing or by drawing attention to parts that need attention. To heal someone else is to help them heal themselves. Healing comes from acceptance of the self. Esperanza's album will affect you differently from me. Still, I believe she's succeeded in that her work guides the listener to a (mental, spiritual, physical) state of peace.

Arbitrary numerical score: 47869