Mumbo Jumbo is a 1972 novel

Novel

A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

 by African-American author Ishmael Reed

Ishmael Reed

Ishmael Scott Reed is an American poet, essayist, and novelist. A prominent African-American literary figure, Reed is known for his satirical works challenging American political culture, and highlighting political and cultural oppression.Reed has been described as one of the most controversial...

. Literary critic Harold Bloom

Harold Bloom

Harold Bloom is an American writer and literary critic, and is Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University. He is known for his defense of 19th-century Romantic poets, his unique and controversial theories of poetic influence, and his prodigious literary output, particularly for a literary...

 cited the novel as one of the 500 most important books in the Western canon

Western canon

The term Western canon denotes a canon of books and, more broadly, music and art that have been the most important and influential in shaping Western culture. As such, it includes the "greatest works of artistic merit." Such a canon is important to the theory of educational perennialism and the...

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Text

Set in 1920s New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

, the novel depicts the struggles of "The Wallflower Order," an international conspiracy dedicated to monotheism

Monotheism

Monotheism is the belief in the existence of one and only one god. Monotheism is characteristic of the Baha'i Faith, Christianity, Druzism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Samaritanism, Sikhism and Zoroastrianism.While they profess the existence of only one deity, monotheistic religions may still...

 and control, against the "Jes Grew" virus, a personification of ragtime

Ragtime

Ragtime is an original musical genre which enjoyed its peak popularity between 1897 and 1918. Its main characteristic trait is its syncopated, or "ragged," rhythm. It began as dance music in the red-light districts of American cities such as St. Louis and New Orleans years before being published...

, jazz

Jazz

Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...

, polytheism

Polytheism

Polytheism is the belief of multiple deities also usually assembled into a pantheon of gods and goddesses, along with their own mythologies and rituals....

, and freedom. The Wallflower Order is said to work in concert with the Knights Templar

Knights Templar

The Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon , commonly known as the Knights Templar, the Order of the Temple or simply as Templars, were among the most famous of the Western Christian military orders...

 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

Haiti

Haiti , officially the Republic of Haiti , is a Caribbean country. It occupies the western, smaller portion of the island of Hispaniola, in the Greater Antillean archipelago, which it shares with the Dominican Republic. Ayiti was the indigenous Taíno or Amerindian name for the island...

, 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

Hero

A hero , in Greek mythology and folklore, was originally a demigod, their cult being one of the most distinctive features of ancient Greek religion...

, an elderly Harlem

Harlem

Harlem is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Manhattan, which since the 1920s has been a major African-American residential, cultural and business center. Originally a Dutch village, formally organized in 1658, it is named after the city of Haarlem in the Netherlands...

 houngan

Houngan

Houngan is the term for a male priest in the voodoo religion in Haiti . The term is derived from the Fon word "hùn gan". There are two ranks of houngan, houngan asogwe and houngan sur pwen...

 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

Sufi Abdul Hamid

Sufi Abdul Hamid was an African-American religious and labor leader, and among the first African converts to Islam, accused of Anti-Semitism...

, a.k.a Eugene Brown, an early black convert to Islam

Islam

Islam . The most common are and .   : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...

), as a group of radicals plans to return museum treasures looted from ancient Egypt

Egypt

Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...

 to Africa, and the Aton

Aten

Aten is the disk of the sun in ancient Egyptian mythology, and originally an aspect of Ra. The deified Aten is the focus of the monolatristic, henotheistic, or monotheistic religion of Atenism established by Amenhotep IV, who later took the name Akhenaten in worship in recognition of Aten...

ists 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

Black Herman

Benjamin Rucker was an American stage magician, better known by his stage name Black Herman. Born in Amherst, Virginia, he was the most prominent African American magician of his time....

 (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

Black Star Line

The Black Star Line was a shipping line incorporated by Marcus Garvey, organizer of the Universal Negro Improvement Association . The shipping line was supposed to facilitate the transportation of goods and eventually African Americans throughout the African global economy...

, a shipping line incorporated by Marcus Garvey

Marcus Garvey

Marcus Mosiah Garvey, Jr., ONH was a Jamaican publisher, journalist, entrepreneur, and orator who was a staunch proponent of the Black Nationalism and Pan-Africanism movements, to which end he founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League...

, who organized the United Negro Improvement Association

Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League

The Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League is a black nationalist fraternal organization founded by Marcus Garvey. The organization enjoyed its greatest strength in the 1990s, prior to Garvey's deportation from the United States of America, after which its...

. Portions of the action take place at the "Villa Lewaro

Villa Lewaro

Villa Lewaro, also known as the Anne E. Poth Home, is located at Fargo Lane and North Broadway in Irvington, New York. It was the home of Madam C. J. Walker from 1918 to 1919. She is believed to be the first American female and first African-American female, self-made millionaire...

" mansion built by Madame C. J. Walker

Madame C. J. Walker

Madam C.J. Walker , born Sarah Breedlove, was an African-American businesswoman, hair care entrepreneur and philanthropist. She made her fortune by developing and marketing a hugely successful line of beauty and hair products for black women under the company she founded, Madam C.J. Walker...

 overlooking the Hudson River

Hudson River

The Hudson is a river that flows from north to south through eastern New York. The highest official source is at Lake Tear of the Clouds, on the slopes of Mount Marcy in the Adirondack Mountains. The river itself officially begins in Henderson Lake in Newcomb, New York...

 and at the Harlem townhouse of her daughter A'Lelia Walker

A'Lelia Walker

A'Lelia Walker was an American businesswoman and patron of the arts. She was the daughter and only child of self-made millionaire Madam C.J. Walker.-Early life:...

, 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

Harlem Renaissance

The Harlem Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned the 1920s and 1930s. At the time, it was known as the "New Negro Movement", named after the 1925 anthology by Alain Locke...

 authors James Weldon Johnson

James Weldon Johnson

James Weldon Johnson was an American author, politician, diplomat, critic, journalist, poet, anthologist, educator, lawyer, songwriter, and early civil rights activist. Johnson is remembered best for his leadership within the NAACP, as well as for his writing, which includes novels, poems, and...

, Claude McKay

Claude McKay

Claude McKay was a Jamaican-American writer and poet. He was a seminal figure in the Harlem Renaissance and wrote three novels: Home to Harlem , a best-seller which won the Harmon Gold Award for Literature, Banjo , and Banana Bottom...

, Wallace Thurman

Wallace Thurman

Wallace Henry Thurman was an American novelist during the Harlem Renaissance. He is best known for his novel The Blacker the Berry: A Novel of Negro Life, which explores discrimination among black people based on skin color.-Early life:...

, Countee Cullen

Countee Cullen

Countee Cullen was an American poet who was popular during the Harlem Renaissance.- Biography :Cullen was an American poet and a leading figure with Langston Hughes in the Harlem Renaissance. This 1920s artistic movement produced the first large body of work in the United States written by African...

, W. E. B. DuBois, and a veiled reference to Malcolm X

Malcolm X

Malcolm X , born Malcolm Little and also known as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz , was an African American Muslim minister and human rights activist. To his admirers he was a courageous advocate for the rights of African Americans, a man who indicted white America in the harshest terms for its...

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Background

Mumbo Jumbo draws freely on conspiracy theory

Conspiracy theory

A conspiracy theory explains an event as being the result of an alleged plot by a covert group or organization or, more broadly, the idea that important political, social or economic events are the products of secret plots that are largely unknown to the general public.-Usage:The term "conspiracy...

, hoodoo, and voodoo traditions, as well as the Afrocentric theories of Garvey and the occult

Occult

The word occult comes from the Latin word occultus , referring to "knowledge of the hidden". In the medical sense it is used to refer to a structure or process that is hidden, e.g...

 author Henri Gamache

Henri Gamache

Henri Gamache was the pseudonym of an otherwise unknown author who was active in the United States during the 1940s, and who wrote on the subject of magic. All his books were published in New York City and most of them consist of semi-scholarly popular compilations that draw from ...

, especially Gamache's theory that the Biblical prophet Moses

Moses

Moses was, according to the Hebrew Bible and Qur'an, a religious leader, lawgiver and prophet, to whom the authorship of the Torah is traditionally attributed...

 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

Mandinka language

The Mandinka language is a Mandé language spoken by millions of Mandinka people in Mali, Senegal, The Gambia, Guinea, Côte d'Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea-Bissau and Chad; it is the main language of The Gambia. It belongs to the Manding branch of Mandé, and is thus fairly...

 mā-mā-gyo-mbō meaning a "magician who makes the troubled spirits of ancestors go away."

Format

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

Vietnam War

The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...

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Influence

The ZBS Foundation

ZBS Foundation

ZBS Foundation, a small non-profit audio production company, was founded by Thomas Lopez in 1970 with a grant from Robert E. Durand as a working commune based on a donated farm in Upstate New York...

 dramatized the novel for a 1980 radio drama

Radio drama

Radio drama is a dramatized, purely acoustic performance, broadcast on radio or published on audio media, such as tape or CD. With no visual component, radio drama depends on dialogue, music and sound effects to help the listener imagine the characters and story...

 of the same name directed by Thomas Lopez

Thomas Lopez

Thomas Lopez, aka Meatball Fulton, is one of the founders and president of the ZBS Foundation. He writes and produces the ZBS Foundation's audio drama productions. Some of these aired in 1984-85 as part of ZBS' stereo radio series The Cabinet of Dr. Fritz.His output includes the entire Jack...

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Parliament-Funkadelic

Parliament-Funkadelic

Parliament-Funkadelic is a funk, soul and rock music collective headed by George Clinton. Their style has been dubbed P-Funk. Collectively the group has existed under various names since the 1960s and has been known for top-notch musicianship, politically charged lyrics, outlandish concept albums...

 leader George Clinton

George Clinton (funk musician)

George Clinton is an American singer, songwriter, bandleader, and music producer and the principal architect of P-Funk. He was the mastermind of the bands Parliament and Funkadelic during the 1970s and early 1980s, and launched a solo career in 1981. He has been cited as one of the foremost...

 has cited Mumbo Jumbo as a primary source of inspiration for his P-Funk mythology

P-Funk mythology

The P-Funk mythology is a group of recurring fictional characters, themes and ideas related in a series of concept albums and live shows, primarily from George Clinton and his founded bands Parliament and Funkadelic....

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