Mumbo Jambo -The Modern Jes Grew
Mumbo Jambo The Modern Jes Grew by: Pedro Oliveira de Miranda In the early 1970s, Ishmael Reed, renowned north American poet and essayist, known for blending satires and cultural criticism in his works, developed a well-defined concept present in the African cultural environment named as Jes Grew. Reed created Jes Grew as a way to represent the African cultural dissemination in the middle 20's. In his novel, Mumbo Jambo, this concept is represented by him as a literal virus outbreak that clearly is a metaphor to this contagious diffusion of African customs such as music, religion, fashion and more. Even though Mumbo Jambo was written over fifty years ago, From hip-hop to fashion, the essence of Jes Grew is still resonating in our everyday life. But could Jes Grew today be something greater? How might this "cultural virus " would evolve in a massively globalized modern world, the same one whic...