Manu Chao

No element is scarce in this chart: three planets in earth, three in air, two in fire and two in water. The record gives Chao Clandestino, sung in five languages, and says it sold millions without radio.

Both lights sit on a boundary, which is unusual enough to be the first thing to say about this chart. The Sun sits on the last eleven minutes of Gemini and may have crossed into Cancer by the evening; the Moon sits on the first forty four minutes of Libra and may have been in Virgo. Gemini knows a thing and passes it on, Cancer keeps it; Virgo corrects it, Libra negotiates it. For a record built on a song carried between languages, a chart that will not say which side of two lines its two lights fell on is almost too fitting.

Mercury sits in easy contact with Neptune a tenth of a degree from exact, the closest thing here, and that is speech on effortless terms with the planet of image: picking a thing up without being told, and an ear for what somebody meant rather than what they said. For a musician working in five languages, there is no contact in the chart that matters more. Mercury was retrograde, and it sits at the apex of a yod with Jupiter and Pluto that never resolves. Jupiter lies at an awkward angle to Pluto at two tenths of a degree.

Jupiter came the whole way round to its Aquarius starting point on 15 January 2021, at fifty nine, six weeks after Saturn had closed its own second lap, and four circuits precede it. Aquarius takes its reading from whatever refused the usual arrangement, and for a record that sold in millions with no radio behind it, refusing the usual arrangement is the entire story. Speech a tenth of a degree from the planet that dissolves a border, in a musician who sang across five of them, is the fact to keep from this chart.