Is Jes Grew Destined to Die?
Mambo Jumbo ends on a melancholic but hopeful note, with Jes Grew dying out, but also with Papa La Bas ensuring everyone that “we will miss it for a while but it will come back, and when it returns we will see that it never left” (Reed 204). But how true is Papa La Bas? Is Jes Grew destined to come back, and will it always be stuck in the cycle of emerging and being suppressed?
In Mumbo Jumbo, Jes Grew is a metaphor for how small cultural movements can end up influencing large groups of people, and how Atonist–– or people who put white, European standards on a pedestal––react negatively to these movements. In Mumbo Jumbo, Jes Grew is an illness that is spreading across the nation causing people to dance and listen to jazz music. In response to this, Hinkle Von Vampton, as an attempt to infiltrate Jes Grew and destroy it from the inside out, creates the “talking android.” The talking android is a man who will pose as a part of the Jes Grew movement, in the case of Mumbo Jumbo the Harlem Renaissance, and create art so vile and disgusting that it breaks the movement apart.
In a lot of ways, the talking android mirrors a phenomenon that happened naturally in America all throughout the twentieth century and continues to happen today. This phenomenon is when certain things will become popular, whether that be styles of music, clothing, or art, and will quickly be taken over by the mainstream, so that the point of the art is no longer strictly artistic, but is now monetary. This effectively kills the “Jes Grew” aspect of whatever is becoming popular, because the minute something is made for money more than for art is the minute it loses its authenticity.
Is this phenomenon always going to exist? We’ve seen it throughout history with music styles like RnB, Rap, and Rock n’ Roll losing its authenticity when becoming mainstream and being taken over by people who didn’t create it. We’ve also seen it with certain styles losing their authenticity becoming mainstream, or with restaurants that claim to be food from different countries but are really americanized versions of those foods that don’t resemble the real thing in the slightest. In all of these circumstances, the Jes Grew element dies when the replica becomes mainstream.
So, is this inevitable? Are we destined to never have anything stay authentic forever, because they are too often being taken over by the fake mainstream version? Unfortunately, I think it is. I think that nothing can become so ubiquitous in certain communities, in the way that Jes Grew tends to, without being observed and stolen by someone who pushes it to the mainstream and makes it lose all of its value. Fortunately, though, I think Papa La Bas has a point. While one example of Jes Grew is dying, another one is being born, something completely new and original and authentic, and the cycle is repeating itself. While Jes Grew is impossible to keep alive in its original form, new forms are constantly emerging, and the cycle is constantly continuing.
Reed, Ishmael. Mumbo Jumbo. Scribner, 1996.
