Summary
Chapter 1
The Mayor of New Orleans is dressed spiffily with Zuzu on his lap. She takes a drink and smokes. The telephone rings and his poker partner tells him to come down quickly, for the dormant thing is now alive and active.
The Mayor stands abruptly and Zuzu falls to the ground in surprise. He tells her he has to get to the infirmary because the Thing “has stirred in its moorings” (3). He and Zuzu drive to St. Louis Cathedral where Marie Laveau used to worship. The door swings open and they see about 22 people lying on cots.
A man tells the Mayor the only thing that anesthetizes them is sleep. There were reports this morning of people doing strange and stupid and sensual things and they figured out it is “this coon mumbo jumbo” (4). They saw it Jes Grewing like in the 1890s and tried to control it but it began spreading.
The Mayor sighs that he has an election coming up but the man urges him that this will soon be a pandemic and the end of civilization. It is serious and keeps changing into something else. It is a psychic epidemic, not a lesser germ—more like a demonic disease. Even the priest was seized by it.
When the Mayor asks if the man talked to the patients, he impatiently says of course, and responds that the person said they saw the Nkulu Kulu of the Zulu, felt like “the gut heart and lungs of Africa’s interior” (5) and could hear drums and banjos and kazoos and started to speak in tongues. This thing knows “no class no race no consciousness” and is “self-propagating and you can never tell when it will hit” (5).
There is a commotion outside and the Mayor rushes out to see Zuzu dancing and rejoicing. Others join in. The Mayor himself feels it. Within seconds the whole French Quarter is in convulsions and Jes Grew is here in New Orleans. There are 10,000 cases by morning.
*
The Wallflower Order seemingly hasn’t learned anything since the 1890s. They did not see Jes Grew as an anti-plague, which it was. It enlivened the air and was the “delight of the gods” (6). It is now seeking its words, its texts, which were not available in 1890. Now it is the 1920s and this might be a false alarm, the Order hopes, but it is unclear.
*
There is a brief quote from Louis Armstrong about the band playing at the funeral and others following it to form the “second line,” where the spirit hits them and they follow along.
*
Definition of mumbo jumbo: “magician who makes the troubled spirits of ancestors go away” (7).
Chapter 2
Jes Grew spreads throughout the country, infecting all it touches.
Chapter 3
The Wallflower Order sometimes must call on the disgraced order of Knights, who are the only ones who could help defend against Jes Grew. Yet they were condemned as polluters of the mind, banished from service of the West.
As Jes Grew spreads, the Mu’tafikah become more active. They are the “art-nappers” of 1920s Manhattan, taking back the fetishes looted from the East to be stored in museums in the West.
Chapter 4
It is 1920, the decade that seems less like a part of history and more like the “hidden After Hours of America struggling to jam” (16).
Jes Grew came to America through cotton. Colonists could have grown anything else but they didn’t; maybe they liked seeing black hands on the white crop.
America is born, astrologer Evangeline Adams says, 3:03 on the Fourth of July. It is mercurial, violent, gluttonous. It is a tobacco auctioneer to the Brits’ Churchill; it is a traveling salesman. It is a snarky adolescent, an upstart.
Chapter 5
The Wallflower Order tries to install an anti-Jes Grew president, Warren Harding. He appears to be committed to rooting out the spreading infection and its sympathizers. He is being secretly watched by a member of the Order who will become his Attorney General.
The second stage of the plan is to “groom a Talking Android who will work within the Negro, who seems to be its classical host; to drive it out, categorize it analyze it expel it slay it blot Jes Grew” (17). Something must be done, and the Android will keep Jes Grew behind the proverbial counter.
Chapter 6
After a wild night, New Orleans rests. Bodies lie in the street, but when will it strike again? It is now crossing state lines to Chicago.
A few men slip into the Mayor’s private hospital room and try to get to the bottom of how he let the resistance to the epidemic wane. If Jes Grew is immune to old remedies, mankind will be lost. The Mayor is ready to give up to the Atonist Path, and succumbs to the dagger. The men steal away.
The Order is no longer fronted by politicians and businessmen and scholars; this is handled by a secret society now.
Chapter 7
New York is used to gang warfare, especially white street gangs. Now there is the Black Buddy Jackson, a man prone to flashy, florid dressing, and Dutch Schlitz, the “Sarge of Yorktown,” a beer baron.
One day Schlitz and his men drive into Harlem but it is oddly deserted. They see no hustlers or peddlers or cops or hookers or anyone at all. He looks at the windows of his stores expecting to see the print of Rembrandt that identifies his properties, but they have all been replaced by images of Prince Hall, founder of the African Lodge #1 of the Black Masons.
Schlitz gets out of the car to look more closely and is indignant but barely has time to register this because he feels Buddy Jackson’s gun at his neck. Gunshots begin ringing out between the gangs and Buddy orders Sarge to leave the neighborhood and never come back. People appear and stream out of the shops and alleys and watch Sarge being forced to depart.
Chapter 8
The 1920s is like a drag race, with the Age of Harding as the “strict upper-lip chrome” (20). The audience is fancy, like those elites who go to dog shows and inspect their pedigreed pooches, but then a scraggly mongrel hound shows up and outdistances all its opponents.
*
An entry in a history book explains what the U.S. was like when Harding became president: frazzled nerves from the end of the war; artificial unity; business depression; economic dislocation; insecurity and fear, turbulence and strife; strikes and bomb plots and deportation of radicals; Sacco & Vanzetti; race riots.
Chapter 9
Wall Street is tense because it realizes that the youth are very close to succumbing to Jes Grew. It is also aware of what is happening in Haiti thanks to the Sun: “VoodDoo General Surrounds Marines At Port-Au-Prince” (22).
A robber baron grumbles at this headline, wondering about Haiti having anything beyond mangos and coffee; it has no culture at all. He pulls out a small sculpture that his wife gave him, deeming it an “ugly” carving of a black figure and claiming the American doughboys will end the thing in Haiti quickly.
His companion wonders why Harding sent troops there in the first place, and the robber baron laughs that it was probably a way to get new fashions for Harding’s wife.
They see a Black man open the door for Buddy Jackson, who is with a “high-yellow” girl and carrying a sack. Suddenly shots ring out and people scream and spread out in the streets in disarray. The broker and his friend are incontrovertibly dead.
Chapter 10
PaPa LaBas “carries Jes Grew in him like most other folk carry genes” (23). There are stories and myths about him; no one gets in his way. People trust his powers, except the Atonists, who scoff at him because he trusts his own mind. He is a familiar sight in Harlem and holds court at the Mumbo Jumbo Kathedral.
When he arrives there this day, Earline is sitting at her desk snacking on fig cookies. PaPa LaBas glances at a photo of the original Kathedral group from a few weeks ago. He is there, as is Earline, and Berbelang with his enigmatic smile, and Charlotte, a French trainee to fill in for Berbelang.
PaPa addresses Earline and tells her that Jes Grew has reached New Orleans and people are calling it a plague when it is actually an anti-plague. He does not know its definitive route yet but assumes it will settle in New York. Here it will finally be a pandemic and they will be done.
This makes Earline mad, and she says this secret society stuff is what made Berbelang left. He has no evidence, she claims. He replies that he has his Knockings and even if other Negroes have forgotten them, he has not. She sighs that this is a new day and they need engineers and lawyers and scientists now. Unimpressed, he replies that before the century is over men will turn back to mystery instead of this “progress.”
Earline is barely listening and starts crying. She says it is Berbelang, who thinks PaPa is a failure and is too wrapped up in Jes Grew, which is a passing fad. Berbelang seems different now, and has red eyes and missionary zeal. She is lonely because he has not come around, and wants to go to a Chitterling Switch tonight. PaPa asks what this is and she shows him a card. She explains it is to raise money for an anti-lynching law, kind of like a rent party. PaPa asks if an old man can come along and she smiles that he is not old and of course he can come.
PaPa asks where Charlotte is and Earline suggests that Charlotte has also been acting strangely these days. He wonders if she is upset at Berbelang leaving. Berbelang always seems to entice the ladies, he adds, such as Earline. She blushes, and tends to her toilette.
Looking above the sink, she sees the sign reminding her to feed the loa. She hasn’t done Tray #21. There are 22 trays in the Mango Room built as tributes to the Haitian loa that LaBas claimed were influences on The Work. This seems quaint to her and she doesn’t understand everything he talks about, but she does what she can. She will do it the next day, she thinks.
PaPa and Earline leave the office and see T Malice with his chauffeur’s hat talking to a young woman. They tease him and he laughs.
Chapter 11
Woodrow Wilson Jefferson is ready to move to the big city and leave the farm forever. In the 1850s his grandfather left his slavemaster and went to New York and brought back works by Marx and Engels, and he himself had found interesting New-York Tribune papers up in the attic. He devoured these, anxious to leave the “darkness for the clearing” (29).
He gathers his things and heads out along the road, reaching the train depot. A few men ask where he is going and he proclaims he’s on his way out the damned town.
Chapter 12
The party is held at a townhouse in Harlem. There are drinks, richly dressed people, and vibrant musical notes emanating from the piano. The year is a brutal one for lynchings; returning Black soldiers also see that they are not welcomed home with open arms as they expected to be. Only with Marcus Garvey coming along has the American Negro woken up from his sleep.
Earline and LaBas see Berbelang and a young blond white man, Thor Wintergreen, the son of a famous tycoon. The four of them exchange hellos but Berbelang is out the door. LaBas calls for him to visit the Kathedral and Earline moans that he has no time for her. She decides to leave, putting her coat back on tearfully.
LaBas sighs at these affairs of the heart, and moves through the crowd. He espies Black Herman, an occultist, at a card table. He also sees Abdul Hamid, the magazine editor, standing against the wall and scowling. He is listening to a radio broadcast about outbreaks of Jes Grew. When music starts, Abdul snarls to turn it off.
Black Herman notices LaBas and greets him amiably, but Abdul sneers at him. Black Herman notes that LaBas’s prophecy seems to be coming true and asks how he predicted it. LaBas replies it was Knockings, and when Black Herman asks what the Jes Grew is up to, he explains that it is an anti-plague and it is yearning for the Work of its Word, to find its Speaking before it is strangled.
Abdul interrupts and says this is a lot of bull. The two men look at him and he comes forward. He says that they are both filling people’s heads with nonsense and they should stop “fulfilling base carnal appetites” (34) because the country needs factories and schools and guns and dollars. He sees this all as superstitious, as “jungle ways” (34) that drag progress. LaBas and Black Herman disagree, saying it is ancient and part of their soul. LaBas tells him he has turned against them and is no different than the Christian he imitates. After all, one derived from the other, and both think women are wicked and are afraid of pantheism.
Hearing this, Abdul counsels him to be careful with his words. LaBas asks where he will leave the ancient Vodun aesthetic, which allows for infinite spirits and holy books. Black Herman resents his accusing them of taking advantage of the people, wondering when he became an arbiter of their tastes.
Abdul smiles mockingly but Black Herman continues, denigrating Mohammad for being prolix and the Koran for being wrong chronologically. Besides, he adds, how are they crazy when he is the one who cane-whipped a few girls outside the Cotton Club for wearing short dresses? Abdul says they had it coming and are sluts.
Abdul notices they do not seem to have an audience anymore and becomes more conciliatory, telling them they’ve “got him,” for he wasn’t born with a caul on his face and or wasn’t predicted in birth by a soothsayer. He is actually out on the street while they are protected by their followers, and he is seeing firsthand how the beautiful community is becoming a “slave hole” (37). There are drugs but there’s no food, so how will people survive? He went to prison for killing a man trying to evict his mother for not sleeping with him, and there he read and absorbed everything he could. He saw how the Man knew he could use academics and all these people with their degrees are really just serving the Man. They’re deemed “qualified” but they’re really just loyal. He had to learn piecemeal, like a quilt maker, and finally taught himself what he needed to know in his own style. He tells the men that these are modern times and their roots and conjure and gris-gris are done; these are the last days of prestidigitation. This new generation has no time for them and they are becoming “mundanists pragmatists and concretists” (39). They are obsolete. Someone is coming and he’ll really get it across, but they will be more and more secluded and fade away.
He concludes his monologue and says he must go, for he has an anthology he is translating that will shake everyone up. LaBas asks what the language is and Abdul replies that it is Hieroglyphics.
Herman and LaBas reflect on Abdul’s words. Herman says he sounds bigoted and fascist. LaBas wonders if they really are out of date. Herman replies no, that newspaper clippings are ephemeral but a JuJu mask will endure for thousands of years. If the New York police wipe out VooDoo, it’ll just reappear somewhere else. There will be people to take this risk forever.
Suddenly they notice President-Elect Harding. He is saying that James Weldon Johnson told him about the war in Haiti, and that he has questioned the press about it. Now he is here to listen to some good music, he says, and the crowd titters as he walks away.
Herman and LaBas bid good evening to each other.
*
Biff Musclewhite used to be Police Commissioner to Consultant to the Metropolitan Police, but now he is the Curator of the Center of Art Detention. He is currently sitting with Schlitz at the table of the Plantation House in the Milky Way, the area of clubs and speakeasies. They are reflecting on their past and how one is now a gangster and the other a cop. Biff explains how there was an opening at the Plutocrat Club and someone told him to learn how to apply the gift of gab to art. Schlitz nods and then complains of his troubles with Buddy Jackson, noting how he seems to have nine lives.
The curtain opens. There is Charlotte’s Pick, a small man named Peter pretending to be a conjure-man. He makes the slave master’s wife, Charlotte, materialize. Everyone at the club—“bankers, publishers, visiting Knights of Pythias and Knights of the White Camelia, theatrical people, gangsters and city officials” (43)—are highly enjoying the show. It is lurid, and Musclewhite muses on this being the Charlotte his friends have told him about, the one whose apartment one might be initiated into certain sexual rites.
The men call two Black waiters over. As Schlitz is about to order, the men pull guns out and blow his head off, then flee into the night.
*
PaPa LaBas is a “descendent from a long line of people who made their pact with nature long ago” (45). He is a “fugitive-hermit, obeah-man, botanist, animal impersonator, 2-headed man,” (45), someone who appears lazy to Atonists but who is actually relaxed and contemplative. He is currently at court to deal with a citation for his dog who shit on the altar steps of St. Patrick’s Cathedral; he is confused, for he was just trying to keep the city streets clean.
He reflects on the Atonists’ anger towards him, and how their patients have been flocking to him recently. Irene Castle wrote a book in which she seemingly endorsed his technique of dancing, saying it kept people healthy and thin, and now some of those tycoons and captains of hers were secretly seeking out Jes Grew. It is like how the Haitian elite “pays homage to Catholicism but keeps a houngan tucked away in the background” (47).
This kind of powerful backing has helped PaPa LaBas stave off the Manhattan Atonists’ attacks, although now Castle has moved right and is consulting the government on Jes Grew. Writings were being censored, people thrown in jail; it is just like it has been with the Wallflower Order doing the dirty work for 2,000 years.
PaPa LaBas is called for his case and refuses to swear on the Bible. The judge dismisses his case, as they do not really want him in jail—just want to annoy him and keep him too busy to attend to the Kathedral.
When T Malice, his driver, picks him up, he tells him Sarge of Yorktown tried to take out Buddy Jackson but failed. T Malice drives him near the attack and looking out among the ambulances and firetrucks and people, LaBas notices a strange object—the broker’s “ugly” fetish.
*
They’ve reached the Kathedral at 136th St. PaPa and his dog wander through the rooms, seeing people dancing and admitting their loa. He observes the black and red décor of the Dark Tower Room and listens to a piano playing Jelly Roll Morton. Since Berbelang called him an anachronism, he’s brought in yoga to be more contemporary. In the Mango Room, the loa wait to be fed, and elsewhere they occasionally take a host. Loa are not daemons in the Freudian sense but bring knowledge that the Atonists wiped out from the West.
In his warm, redolent office he settles in. Earline approaches him and he notices her serpentine walk. He thanks her for inviting him to the party and hopes his argument with Abdul was not a problem. She scoffs that he is always like that, and heard he is getting money from the KKK. PaPa LaBas reflects and says he likes Abdul, for he seems to be “just an irritated lyricist who can’t seem to get his music sung” (51).
Earline tells him she thinks Charlotte might quit, so LaBas goes to her and she does indeed tell him she is leaving. She thinks he is to cultish with this New HooDoo therapy. He knows she’s gotten an offer for the stage, though, which she admits to. He warns her not to use any of the Work in her performance and she wonders why not, saying she has studied it. He replies that he does not know how the Haitian aspects will translate here, and he is worried about it.
They say their goodbyes, and he is still disconcerted about any of his technicians not being fully prepared for side effects.
He sends Charlotte roses.
Analysis
Mumbo Jumbo is a difficult novel to summarize, as it loops back and forth in time, dispenses in many cases with traditional plot and characterization, includes photos and quotes and an entire bibliography, and turns on their heads established notions of religion and history. In an interview, Reed compared himself to a painter and said of his writing: “Gumbo is like a metaphor for my writing style.... [Gumbo includes] the possibilities of exquisite and delicious combinations. I think that is what I try to deal in exquisite and delicious combinations.... You take the Knight Templars, an idea from Western history, and New Orleans jazz and painting and music and all these things put together into a gumbo.... Now, what I'm doing is what a painter would call a collage, which is a very old form they've been using, and it's the kind of thing that I wanted to incorporate in my work. So I took diverse or disparate elements and gave them some kind of organic unity. Painters do this. Musicians do this too. Why can't writers do this?”
In the abundant critical writing on the novel, scholars have also discussed what this novel is: Tamiko Fiona Nimura states that it is “an intertextual collage full of photographs and illustrations, diagrams, excerpts of dance manuals, letters, news flashes, Time-Life history books, and even a partial bibliography. It is a satire, a detective novel, ostensibly set in the Harlem Renaissance,” and W. Lawrence Hogue calls it a “collage” and writes, “Reed in Mumbo Jumbo first mixes romance, New Orleans jazz, necromancy, hagiography, Egyptology, Voodoo theories of history, American civilization, western history, movie techniques, black dance, a science fiction story, and a fantasy tale with the detective story. The reader does not know whether Mumbo Jumbo is a novel, a history book, a spell, or a Voodoo narrative.”
The main narrative is that of PaPa LaBas and his detective work to find the Text that goes along with the music and movement of Jes Grew, a musical/spiritual/emotional “anti-plague” that emanates from ancient Black cultures and fills its “carriers” (the “JGCs” of the novel) with a zest for all that is lively, sensual, and fertile. This first section situates us in the 1920s (though it also references other older eras), as well as introduces us to the Jes Grew phenomenon. It presents LaBas, the hero, and his associate Black Herman; some of the villains, the Atonists and the Wallflower Order; and a host of other characters, such as Buddy Jackson, Woodrow Wilson Jefferson, Abdul Hamid, and Earline, whose roles in the tale are yet to be fully revealed. To make sense of the section and to set us up for the remainder of the novel, we will look at some of these topics in detail.
“Jes Grew” comes from a real phrase uttered by writer and NAACP leader James Weldon Johnson of ragtime songs, which he says, like Topsy in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s 1852 novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, “jes grew,”—i.e. they simply happened and spread. Reed uses this term to describe his phenomena of dance, music, sex, life, and fecundity. In the first section, those who catch it in New Orleans (appropriately, as the birthplace of jazz and African American culture) hear and feel and sense the ancient connection to Africa. It originated with the slaves during the time of cotton and had a revival in the 1890s. For a time it was moribund, and now it is rising again in the 1920s. Critic Richard Swope writes, “Jes Grew is the migration, the flow that cannot be controlled or restricted; it creeps across the supposedly variegated American landscape, defying all boundaries; it ‘knows no class no race no consciousness’ (5). In other words, it disregards all Atonist social demarcations regarding both the subject and the space the subject inhabits.” At the beginning of the novel, Jes Grew is seeking its text so it will be complete.
The novel is set in the 1920s, and Reed fills it with real people and real events. There are references to the stock market, jazz, Prohibition, Harding, isolationism, the Harlem Renaissance, the veterans of WWI, radio, cars, and much, much more. However, Reed isn’t interested in giving a standard account of this decade or any other, in fact, as his novel challenges the very concept of a Westernized version of history. Theodore O. Mason, Jr. notes of Reed’s fiction, “a writer such as Reed considers himself alienated from classic historical fiction, not simply for aesthetic reasons alone but especially because the vision of history propagated in those classical texts simply ignores the reality of black people in the world, except as adjuncts to the dominant white society.” His goal is to “loosen the stranglehold of the Judeo-Christian tradition on the cultural patterns of black people everywhere (not simply Afro-Americans). Further, he wishes to reestablish the virtue of fiction as performance on the part of the artist, wresting it from the domination of the West, which to his mind has emphasized contemplation and tranquility over performance and activity.” Overall, Reed's task as a historical writer “is to reveal the hidden centrality of people of color everywhere, while depicting the mythic patterns controlling that history.”
Mumbo Jumbo’s main character of PaPa LaBas is notably a nod to a real figure. Swope explains, “LaBas's very name, in fact, is taken from the African deity Legba and his Haitian incarnation PaPa Legba, a trickster figure who mediates between the spiritual and material worlds,” and Donald Hoffman adds, “He is the Fon/Yoruba god, Legba, who endured the Middle Passage with his people to become the Haitian deity of crossroads and gateways, the first god to be invoked in all Voodoo rituals … Appropriately, as the loa who mediates between gods and men in Fon mythology, Legba/LaBas provides our access to the text seeking its Text, for ‘he alone can deliver the messages of the gods in human language and interpret their will’.” Bob Corbett compiles several of the main characteristics of Legba: “[He is an] Old man who guards the crossroads…Legba controls the crossing over from one world to the other. He is the contact between the worlds of spirit and of flesh. He can deliver messages of gods in human language and interpret their will. He is the god of destiny and is also the intermediary between human beings and divine gods. Legba is one of the most important loa in Haitian voodoo. He is the first loa to be called in a service, so that he can open the gates to the spirit world and let them communicate with other loa…He is the origin and the male prototype of voodoo…He is the guardian of voodoo temples, courtyards, plantations,, and crossroads. He protects the home.”
Reed writes LaBas as a dapper, intuitive, wise, and mythical figure, whose origins among the Harlemites where he resides, appropriately, are obscured, and his accomplishments storied. He “own[s] [his] own mind” (24), unlike the Atonists, and is the representation of the Hoodoo tradition (African and Afro-American religious and cultural tradition in opposition to Judeo-Christianity). At the Mumbo Jumbo Kathedral, he makes sure the loa (the spirits of Haitian Vodou and American Voodoo) are fed, and, at the beginning of this novel, he begins his “astro-detective” work to find the sacred Text before the Atonists do. Some of his younger acolytes wonder if he is too mystical and too old-fashioned: Earline tells him, “This is a new day, pop. We need scientists and engineers, we need lawyers” (26) and thinks to herself that “He still clung to some of the ways of the old school” (28).
The Atonists are, more or less, monotheistic white supremacists. They see themselves as the upholders of Western Civilization and their goal is to find the sacred Text before it reunites with Jes Grew and obliterates what they hold dear. We will learn more about them in subsequent chapters.
Woodrow Wilson Jefferson and Abdul Hamid are both Black, but they identify with different ideologies that shape their view of the world. Jefferson is a Black Marxist and sees everything in light of class struggle, and Hamid is a Black Nationalist, who is concerned about the material conditions of his people but, to put it simply, less concerned about their spiritual condition. He decries Jes Grew as “a whole lot of Bull” and as “Old, primitive, superstitious jungle ways” (34). He is conservative in his morals, “cane-whipping” a few girls whom he thought were dressed whorishly. Self-taught and proud, he considers himself a pragmatist who is aware that these are “modern times” and “the last days of [LaBas’s] roots and your conjure and your gris-gris and your healing potions and love powder” (38).
