In just the first
9 chapters of Mumbo Jumbo, I cannot
help but see the correlation between the Jes Grew epidemic and the spread of
jazz in the early 20th century.
The whole plague begins in 1920s New Orleans, around the time that jazz is
taking root in New Orleans as well. Then
it spreads in a very similar fashion as jazz: New York, Chicago, St. Louis, as
well as a large number of cases in Mississippi, the birthplace of the
blues. On top of that, the symptoms of
the condition seem to be eerily similar to how people may react to jazz: Dancing,
singing, grinding, slapping, etc are very reasonable things to do when in the
heat of a jazz club.
Some of the images
in the beginning of Mumbo Jumbo also
seem to suggest jazz connections -- when I saw the picture of the people with
the bowler hats right before the title page, the first thing that popped into
my mind was a jazz club. The people seem
to be dancing, clapping, having a good time, and the lighting seems to be that
of some sort of nightclub.
Then Reed just
sticks in a paragraph about Charlie Parker in the 4th chapter: “1920. Charlie
Parker, the houngan (a word derived from n’gana
gana) for whom there was no master adept enough to award him the Asson, is
born. 1920-1930. That 1 decade which doesn’t seem so much a
part of American history as the hidden After-Hours of America struggling to
jam. To get through." (16) Although
I don’t know what a lot of this quote means, Reed seems to be highlighting the
birth of one of the most prominent jazz musicians of the 20th
century and talking about how jazz is beginning, but “struggling”, to jam in
the 1920-30s.
The text itself
seems to have a rhythmic structure similar to jazz, with various rhymes thrown
in at odd times [;)] and a disjointed, confusing feel as if the reader is a
first-time listener of a completely new form of music. Even the title, “Mumbo Jumbo”, has a bounce
and syncopation to it. We naturally put
more emphasis on the “Bo”’s over the “Mum” and “Jum” (mumBO jumBO) giving it a
syncopated feeling when saying it. One
instance of a rhyme just thrown into the text is when Jes Grew-infected New
Orleans is described as “a mess. People sweep the clutter from the streets. The
city’s head is once more calm.
Normal. It sleeps after the night
of howling, speaking-in-tongues, dancing to drums” (17)
I
don’t know if Reed will take the correlations between Jes Grew and jazz further
into the book, but in just the first night’s reading it really stuck out to me,
especially when he drops the Louis Armstrong quote:
“Once the band
starts, everybody starts swaying from one side of the street to the other,
especially those who drop in and follow the ones who have been to the
funeral. These people are known as “the
second line” and they may be anyone passing along the street who wants to hear
the music. The spirit hits them and they follow
(My
italics)
Louis
Armstrong” (7)
I’m
not sure if this quote will make more sense as we progress further in the book,
but at the moment Reed seems to be using Louis Armstrong’s words about jazz to describe
how Jes Grew spreads and effects its “victims.”
I'm extrapolating from two points here, but if Mumbo Jumbo is really a book about the jazz age in disguise and Ragtime is a book dealing with the ragtime era, is this entire course just going to be a line of books paralleling musical movements? ...And then I remember that Slaughterhouse Five is on the list and I can't honestly recall any major music themes it dealt with and my minor conspiracy theory falls flat on its face. Ah well. Still, the jazz comparison makes sense as far as I can blindly trust the information from this blog post (which I will because I'm just that naive and trusting a person) -- not to mention that a few different online summaries and reviews of Mumbo Jumbo say Jes Grew is a metaphor for African-American culture, of which jazz is a pretty significant part in the '20s.
ReplyDeleteNot the entire course--although wow, that could be a really fun course to develop, Music in American Literature. But this is absolutely why I chose to pair these two books at the start of the course, and one of the reasons why we're reading Reed after Doctorow, even though _MJ_ was published earlier--the historical/cultural period it depicts (the Jazz era) is subsequent to the Ragtime era.
DeleteI like this comparison. I agree with Sarah in that Jes Grew is more of a metaphor for black culture, as well as the fact that jazz was a big part of black culture. So James, your theory could hold, but it may just be a smaller part of one giant metaphor. It would be really cool if Reed went further into the jazz aspect - if he does do it, it should be interesting.
ReplyDeleteRe: the passage about Charlie Parker. Reed definitely seems to see some numerological/historical significance in the fact that Parker is born in 1920, at the start of the "jazz decade." As for understanding the stuff about Parker as a "houngan" who was so ahead of his time that no one could award him the "asson," the Internet might be of some help. This novel requires its reader to familiarize themselves with some Voodoo concepts: the Houngan is a male priest in Vodoo, and the Asson is a kind of rattle that serves as the "badge" of a Houngan.
ReplyDeleteSo Reed is directly associating Parker's innovations in jazz to the spread of Voodoo culture and its "gods" throughout America. Definitely a Jes Grew carrier, Charlie Parker.
You bring up a really good point, James. I still wonder at what Jes Grew could really be and why it has such a weird name. In addition to the correlation to the spread of jazz, I feel like the language used really supports you comparison. A lot of the language is spoken in jive; the jargon of the Jazz Age.
ReplyDeleteWe talked a lot in class yesterday about what "Jes Grew" could literally mean, and there were several ideas talked around: Jonah brought up that it sounds like "Jazz Groove" and Mr. Mitchell talked about how Jazz used to be spelled/pronounced more like "Jass" which is even closer to "Jes". What gives us the most insight into why it is called "Jes Grew" is the quote from James Johnson on page 11: "The earliest Ragtime songs, like Topsy, "jes' grew."" As Mr. Mitchell pointed out in class, Topsy is a character from Uncle Tom's Cabin that says repeatedly when asked where he is from, "I jes' grew!" (Like how jazz and ragtime "just grew".)
DeleteTo a much lesser extent than you, I also suspected connections between Jes Grew and jazz when we were introduced to the confusion, and our discussion in class today confirmed it! What intrigues me the most is still the specific reference to Jes Grew as a "plague/anti-plague" and the cryptic Wallflower Order that opposes it. At this point I think I understand the connotations of Jes Grew better than whatever the Order is meant to represent...Some sort of uptight resistance group against jazz, black culture, the Harlem era, or something else?
ReplyDeleteI love your comparison between jazz and the various rhythms of Reed's writing style, disregarding the common conventions. It actually makes it kind of funny then that I feel so high and mighty above the Wallflower Order who are so angry at the Jes Grew, and yet here I am struggling with and being upset at the jazz of the book itself. I imagine Reed is expecting that, and he's trying to put us in the shoes of those so opposed to the "plague." As much as I appreciate what he's doing though, I really hope either I get more used to it or he dials it back just a bit, because this book has been a whole lot for me to try to digest so far.
ReplyDeleteI definitely think that jazz does play a large part in the story of Mumbo Jumbo, but I don't think it's the focus. Because the Wallflower Order has been "fighting" Jas Grew for a long time, which seems to suggest that Jas Grew is referring to black culture, with jazz as a manifestation of the spread of black culture in America.
ReplyDeleteThe spread of jazz does seem important in relation to Jes Grew and Mumbo Jumbo in general. I didn't notice the rhymes within the text before reading your post, and it is interesting how Reed is incorporating all of these little details to make the overall plot and message more potent. I think that the theme of the fight between two cultures, in this case traditional american and the Wallflower order vs. jazz culture, will keep echoing through the book.
ReplyDeleteInteresting post! I like having the perspective of someone who has studied music to higher degree than me, especially the bit about the language sounding syncopated. In addition to the evidence provided here, there are the references to Voodoo. Louisiana Voodoo, much like jazz, was developed by African Americans in New Orleans in this time period.
ReplyDeleteAt this point in the book I think we can safely say that Jazz is a very important part of the whole thing, but maybe not the point. Really Jazz is a specific outbreak of Jes Grew which stands for a much more diverse and complicated picture of African and Haitian culture. I would say that the polytheistic idea of religions is even more representative, at this point, of Jes Grew than music, though the music is definitely a medium that we can easily observe the ideas through.
ReplyDelete