| Mumbo Jumbo | |
|---|---|
Scribner Paperback Edition (1996) |
|
| Author(s) | Ishmael Reed |
| Country | USA |
| Language | English |
| Publication date | 1972 |
| Media type | |
| ISBN | 0684824779 |
| OCLC Number | 35158152 |
Mumbo Jumbo is a 1972 novel by African-American author Ishmael Reed. Literary critic Harold Bloom cited the novel as one of the 500 most important books in the Western canon.[1]
Contents |
Set in 1920s New York City, the novel depicts the struggles of "The Wallflower Order," an international conspiracy dedicated to monotheism and control, against the "Jes Grew" virus, a personification of ragtime, jazz, polytheism, and freedom. The Wallflower Order is said to work in concert with the Knights Templar Order to prevent people from dancing, to end the dance crazes spreading among black people (who are referred to in the novel as "Jes Grew Carriers" or "J.G.C.s").
Historical, social, and political events mingle freely with fictional inventions. The United States' occupation of Haiti, attempts by whites to suppress jazz music, and the widespread belief that president Warren Harding had black ancestry are mingled with a plot in which the novel's hero, an elderly Harlem houngan named PaPa LaBas, searches for a mysterious book that has disappeared with black militant Abdul Sufi Hamid (whose name reflects that of the Harlem streetcorner radical preacher Sufi Abdul Hamid, a.k.a Eugene Brown, an early black convert to Islam), as a group of radicals plans to return museum treasures looted from ancient Egypt to Africa, and the Atonists within the Wallflower Order are trying to locate and train the perfect "Talking Android," a black man who will renounce African American culture in favor of European American culture. One of the supporting characters, an ally of Papa La Bas, is Black Herman (Bejamin Rucker, 1892-1934), an actual African-American stage magician and root doctor. Another touch of realism is the inclusion of a mysterious ocean liner that is part of the Black Star Line, a shipping line incorporated by Marcus Garvey, who organized the United Negro Improvement Association. Portions of the action take place at the "Villa Lewaro" mansion built by Madame C. J. Walker overlooking the Hudson River and at the Harlem townhouse of her daughter A'Lelia Walker, known as "The Dark Tower", located at 136th Street near Lenox Avenue. Other famous people who appear in the novel include the dance instructor Irene Castle, and the Harlem renaissance authors James Weldon Johnson, Claude McKay, Wallace Thurman, Countee Cullen, W. E. B. DuBois, and a veiled reference to Malcolm X.
Mumbo Jumbo draws freely on conspiracy theory, hoodoo, and voodoo traditions, as well as the Afrocentric theories of Garvey and the occult author Henri Gamache, especially Gamache's theory that the Biblical prophet Moses was black. The book's title is explained by a quote from the first edition of the American Heritage Dictionary deriving the phrase from Mandingo mā-mā-gyo-mbō meaning a "magician who makes the troubled spirits of ancestors go away."[2]
The format and typography of Mumbo Jumbo are unique and make allusion to several typographic and stylistic conventions not normally associated with novels. The text begins and ends as if it were a movie script, with credits, a fade-in, and a freeze-frame followed by the publication and title pages which occur after chapter one. This is followed by a closing section that mimics a scholarly book on social history or folk magic by citing a lengthy bibliography. In addition, the tale is illustrated with drawings, photographs, and collages, some of which relate to the text, some of which look like illustrations from a social-studies book on African-American history, and some of which seem to be included as a cryptic protest against the then-current Vietnam War.
The ZBS Foundation dramatized the novel for a 1980 radio drama of the same name directed by Thomas Lopez.
Parliament-Funkadelic leader George Clinton has cited Mumbo Jumbo as a primary source of inspiration for his P-Funk mythology.[3]