Mumbo Jumbo: Jes Grew

Jes Grew, the ragtime/jazz movement that is sweeping the nation in Ishmael Reed's Mumbo Jumbo, is not only a musical revolution, but also a spiritual reawakening for African Americans. The movement, likened to a "Loa," an infectious worm or spirit, is an attitude, an idea, a time of change that has been suppressed and delayed for too long.

As a piece of the collective black identity, the Atonists see Jes Grew as a threat to their hold on society, though not all see it that way; poet Nathan Brown says to magazine publisher Hinkle Von Vampton, "It may be a malady to you but many of us are trying to catch it" (117). Von Vampton is also informed by poet Major Young, "We all have our own unique styles," and that Jes Grew provides the opportunity and permission to grab at that style and display it any way possible, be it music, visual art, or dance (102).

After finding Jes Grew more difficult to catch than it seems, Brown reminds Benoit Battraville that he was going to teach Brown how to catch it, to which Battraville replies:

Ask Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith, your poets, your painters, your musicians, ask them how to catch it. Ask those people who be shaking their tambourines impervious of the ridicule they receive [...] Open-Up-To-Right-Here and then you will have something coming from your experience that the whole world will admire and need. [...] our nation did not heed the prophecies of its artist and it paid dearly. We will never make that mistake again. (152)

Battraville seems to be echoing Major Young's sentiments, that Jes Grew is a chance for the people to take back a piece of themselves by learning from those who have already found it, the artists and musicians who have claimed a piece of Jes Grew as their own.

The opposition to Jes Grew is just as adamant in their efforts as those who try to catch the liberating disease. Von Vampton's "Talking Android" is to be "his pet zombie he could use any way he wanted to undermine Jes Grew. Tell it, it was promising but flawed. Tell it that it had a long way to go" (139). Von Vampton goes on to fantasize that the Talking Android could be "Mammy Juddy on the plantation who would once more serve me, the slavemaster [...]," asserting his white identity as something to lord over the blacks being moved (by Jes Grew) towards cultural advancement and appreciation (140).