MJJG - brief gleanings from academia

[Raphael Saltwood]

https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=8750&context=etd

Chapter 4, “Hoodooed by _Mumbo Jumbo_: How a White Man Caught Jes Grew” tells of his own grade school experience in a class recitation of “The Congo” -

“Our audience reacted, first with stunned silence, then polite clapping. I, however, carried the specter of hoodoo and the “boomlay boom” deep within after that applause ceased. I had become a Jes Grew Carrier.”

He works out on that six ways from Sunday, in a quite personalized essay, noting Henry Louis Gates’s brief treatment of “The Congo” as a springboard for MJ, and how Ishmael Reed somewhat downplays the notion.




At an undergraduate honors level, Zoyd Wheeler’s nephew Kevin also contributed a quite personalized essay on Jazz and signifying in MJ.

https://scholarsarchive.library.albany.edu/honorscollege_eng/19/

He makes good points regarding jazz, signifying, and MJ, although I wonder how much better his advisers might have compelled him to make it, had they taken a more activist role. He seems to back away from his own insights, and from the task of writing itself. I fully sympathize, of course, which is why I enjoyed it so much.

One part that really stands out is his analysis of articles from the popular press in the ‘20s which explicitly compared jazz to an epidemic, and his suggestion that Ishmael Reed’s signification was an ironic reclamation of sorts.