Disco is Dead
In Mumbo Jumbo we see the conflict between black Jes Grew culture and white Atonism. By the epilogue of the book, Jes Grew has developed into a recognized entity celebrated outside the Kathedral. However in the eyes of Papa Labas, it has been changed to the point of almost being unrecognizable.
We can see similar things happen to real life black counter culture, specifically through music, such as the dilution of rap from a way for disadvantaged black teens to express themselves through music, into the corporate cookie cutter tracks of today; or taking black R&B music and refining and stealing credit from its creators to make rock music. Let’s not forget about disco, white washed and sanitized to the point where even general audiences couldn’t stand it any more.
In the real world, talking androids take over counter culture and ruin it for the masses, taking away what made it special in the first place. That’s why you can see Kendrick Lamar rapping on a Taylor Swift song, O.J. Simpson saying he’s “not black, he’s O.J.”, or Elvis’s covers of Little Richard’s songs getting bigger than Little Richard could have ever hoped for at the time.
Ishmael Reed recognized that American culture was moving towards a sanitized, non-threatening depiction of black culture, and thus showed this through the final result of Jes Grew.
We can see similar things happen to real life black counter culture, specifically through music, such as the dilution of rap from a way for disadvantaged black teens to express themselves through music, into the corporate cookie cutter tracks of today; or taking black R&B music and refining and stealing credit from its creators to make rock music. Let’s not forget about disco, white washed and sanitized to the point where even general audiences couldn’t stand it any more.
In the real world, talking androids take over counter culture and ruin it for the masses, taking away what made it special in the first place. That’s why you can see Kendrick Lamar rapping on a Taylor Swift song, O.J. Simpson saying he’s “not black, he’s O.J.”, or Elvis’s covers of Little Richard’s songs getting bigger than Little Richard could have ever hoped for at the time.
Ishmael Reed recognized that American culture was moving towards a sanitized, non-threatening depiction of black culture, and thus showed this through the final result of Jes Grew.
I agree with part of what you said but I don't think Jes Grew is being overpowered by the talking androids of our era. One example brought up in class is Beyonce and her music and many other black (and other minorities') music still emit Jes Grew vibes. It's different, but not completely unrecognizable.
ReplyDeleteI agree that examples of Jes Grew still exist in our society, but I also agree with whoever's blog this is that they are being standardized. Basically, it is no longer a separate idea, it has been combined with atonist ideas, which means it can be understood as more of an atonist idea than it was. I'm not sure if that made any sense, but yeah.
DeleteOnce it's been standardized, it stops being Jes Grew. That makes the existence of the Book of Thoth kind of weird, since it lays out the dance moves and doesn't leave much room for interpretation. I guess Jes Grew needs some direction, some codified form it can take, but some genres ("corporate cookie cutter tracks") take that too far.
ReplyDelete-Reed
I agree that once something is sanitized it is no longer Jes Grew. Thats why I think that its important that in Mumbo Jumbo Papa LaBas makes it clear that Jes Grew lives on after the text was destroyed and it will continue to grow. It can't be defined or held down and the point of Jes Grew is that it gives you life and spirit so once that life and spirit is sucked out of something that might have once contained Jes Grew, it no longer has it.
ReplyDeleteI think it'd be interesting to see different manifestations of Jes Grew as individual loas, categorizing black music as a subset of these loas. Once disco came around and "sanitized" the jazz and R&B it came after, the loa of jazz in Jes Grew could be seen as dead. However, as we know from Mumbo Jumbo, there are an infinite number of loas that are always created. Jes Grew is never really dead, and continues manifesting itself in, for our case, different styles of music - hip hop, contemporary R&B, and rap. I think that although white artists can be seen as sanitizing these genres (Macklemore himself, and also the fact that he raps in like ballads idk I think it's weird but whatever) Jes Grew will proceed to reappear as new forms of African American music, with every release from a genuine African American musical artist.
ReplyDeleteI think your point of "American culture was moving towards a sanitized, non-threatening depiction of black culture" relates to your comment in class when we watched Beyoncé's Superbowl performance which was prefaced by a palatable performance by white people by Bruno Mars. Now there's this new debate about whether Bruno Mars uses his racial ambiguity to appropriate black culture, and if he kind of corrupts black music with his music that doesn't really speak about meaningful topics, which is why he is so popular.
ReplyDeleteThis is a really interesting post! Reading Mumbo Jumbo I was thinking of various parallels that we see in society today, just like the examples that you listed. One thing that I think differs is the idea that in the novel Atonism is a distinctive group of people, while in life it's various people and not a specific group.
ReplyDeleteCool post! It reminds me of a lot of country music today. It's been called "hip hop for people who are scared of black people," (https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/news/steve-earle-country-music-nashville-chris-stapleton-kendrick-lamar-oasis-a7791486.html) and that's weird. Like, they have adopted the kicks and snares common in rap music today, and made it their own. I know country isn't at all like rap, but it's taking over parts of rap so it can still hide from real rap music. It also reminds me a lot of Bruno Mars like we watched in class. There's really still a lot of cultural appropriation and culture vultures. Cool post!
ReplyDelete