Mumbo Jumbo by Ishmael Reed tackles the spread of black culture and social dynamics of 1920s America. The book opens up with the description of the main conflict: “Don’t you understand, if this Jes Grew becomes pandemic it will mean the end of Civilization As We Know It?... This is a psychic epidemic, not a lesser germ like typhoid yellow fever or syphilis” (Reed 4-5). Jes Grew, or a signifier of black culture, manifests as a metaphorical disease that spreads across America “following a strange course” such as “Pine Bluff and Magnolia Arkansas…Nashville and Knoxville Tennessee as well as St. Louis” (Reed 13). The choice in depicting black culture as a disease highlights the racial tensions between the predominant white culture, and the upcoming marginalized cultures. It demonstrates the moral panic over jazz and the common ideology that black culture is—like a virus—infecting white culture.
Culture is organic. It’s something that cannot be predicted and grows in its own ways. It’s more of a social phenomenon; something that cannot be created by a single person. In this, it raises the question of where did these cultures come from? Especially with no basis nor known authors, are these cultures just as legitimate without having a single, identifiable originator? Will cultures without a text eventually die out, suggesting that it is less than and will be forgotten? What does it mean that Jes Grew is “seeking its text?” As emphasized by James Weldon Johnson, Jes Grew’s “words were unprintable, but the tune was irresistible, and belonged to nobody.” Ishmael Reed investigates these ideas as the main characters in Mumbo Jumbo all seek for the Text of Jes Grew, all with different motives. Having a text almost immortalizes a culture in history, recording its existence and contextualizing it within the greater scope of history. The greatest indicator of culture is the social responses it brings. Through understanding the context of a culture, only then can one comprehend its significance. Within Mumbo Jumbo, there is a larger cultural, social, and political context to understand for Jes Grew to reach its full importance. We also see this with the work of the Mu’Tafikah: returning artworks that are stranded from its cultural context to its original location, thus restoring its meaning.
Culture is also impacted by its outside influences. When a minority culture is appropriated and taken into the dominant one, it is viewed as less of a threat. The over looming threat of Jes Grew was successfully neutralized as it was able to integrate into the dominant white culture in a way. This is seen with the plans of Hinkle Von Vampton and the Wallflower Order, with Vampton planning to take Jes Grew and appropriate it in order to counteract it. Despite Jes Grew “dying out” in the end, PaPa LaBas explains to Earline that “Jes Grew has no end and no beginning…We will miss it for a while but it will come back, and when it returns we will see that it never left” (Reed 204).
If we take Jes Grew as a larger metaphor for a secondary social phenomenon that attacks the position of the dominant society, examples of Jes Grew are present everywhere. Similar to an epidemic, it’s viewed as a threat until it can be contained. It never truly dies out until it resurges once again. They both spread and go viral in waves. Ishmael Reed highlights the social dynamics of a rising marginalized group and the outbreak and response it elicits from the main group.
