Moses and Cultural Appropriation in Mumbo Jumbo

    Ishmael Reed makes many comments on cultural appropriation all throughout Mumbo Jumbo, specifically on the theft, commercialization, or bastardization of Black culture at the hands of White people. Examples of this theme include the Mu'tafikah, a group of Robin Hood-esque thieves who have made it their goal to reclaim the artifacts of largely Black civilizations which currently rest in various "Centers of Art Detention" (15) across New York City; Hinckle Von Vampton's blackface Talking Android designed to destroy Jes Grew by presenting a massively oversimplified and offensive version of it to the world; and even Charlotte, a former member of the Mumbo Jumbo Kathedral who left to entertain rich White people on the stage with a bastardized, commercialized version of "the Work." Later in the story, PaPa LaBas and other members of the Kathedral crash the party where the Talking Android is being "revealed" with the intent to arrest von Vampton and his conspirators. But many members of the crowd want to know exactly what he is guilty of, and so LaBas begins to tell a series of stories about Set, Osiris, and Moses that took place thousands of years ago in ancient Egypt. Reed takes significant liberties with these stories, however, in keeping with the rest of Mumbo Jumbo. (For example, there were obviously no magical nuclear explosions in ancient Egypt, nor did Moses have sex with a god.) But through these fantastical elements, Reed's aforementioned claim about cultural appropriation, a key element in the rest of the story, continues to shine through.

    This claim is especially clear in chapters 52 with the story of Moses, the adopted son of King Tut's daughter, who seemingly begins his story as a follower of the long since dead Osiris. He frequently visits the farms by the Nile, where the men there call him "Pharaoh." (175) They also often play beautiful music inspired by Osiris' beliefs (in a surprisingly Jes Grew-like manner,) and one day Moses joins in. Afterwards, seeking to improve his own playing, he asks them about "the heaviest sound they had ever heard" (176), and they all agree that a man named Jethro, descended from one of the original followers of Osiris, is that person; he is so skilled that "lions assemble on the grounds of his farm" and that "crops [...] climb into the bedroom window." (176) So, Moses immediately decides that he must visit this man and study under him for however long it may take to learn his craft.

    But during his stay in Jethro's town and his subsequent departure, Moses begins to change for the worse. He starts by essentially lying to him and quickly descends from there. First, to quickly gain Jethro's trust, he hires some men to pretend to attack Jethro's cattle so that he can then ride down from the hills and pretend to "save" them. Then, after worming his way into Jethro's life, he writes down every one of his songs and even marries his daughter to learn the words to them too, which are supposed to be a family secret. His intent at this point appears (outwardly) to benefit the Osirian Order through this music, but Moses' quest for personal glory is still apparent here; he wants to become the Hierophant of that Order (and maybe pick up some "lovely Black brides" (177) along the way, too.) But these private thoughts quickly turn into actions after Jethro tells Moses about the whereabouts of the sacred Book of Thoth and how to obtain it. Moses climbs Mount Horeb and contemplates this information for 12 days before receiving an unexpected visit from the ghost of Set, the founder of Atonism and essentially the devil on Moses' shoulder. In this moment, the ghost seems to turn Osiris into a kind of vessel for the dying cult of Aton. All of his selfish goals for himself instantly become outwardly apparent, and he returns to Jethro's ranch "a new man," specifically an enraged, elitist, and racist jerk: a "2-bit sorcerer practicing the Left Hand." (179)

    After this greed-driven transformation, Moses, returns to Egypt with his stolen songs, apparently now as the Pharaoh. There, he publicly denounces the same farmers he once played with as "a few old fools in the hills," (182) before announcing his own "dignified" concert, one in which he would be the sole performer, contrary to Jethro's performances and the idea of Jes Grew as a whole. He herds all of his people into the concert grounds and begins to perform a "flat, weak" rendition of Jethro's songs deprived of all its "lowdown rhythms." To receive applause for this pathetic performance, he literally has to beat the audience into submission with the full force of his sycophantic Atonist minions. As Moses begins to sing from the sacred Book of Thoth while shaking his hips like Elvis, the Osirians hidden in the crowd cannot contain their rage any longer. They leap up from their seats and begin to play their own instruments over Moses. And as they do this, the enraged crowd suddenly begins to calm down, and many even begin to join in with their own instruments and dance. Some storm the stage as the Atonists attempt to push them back, but to no avail. Moses and his minions are driven back all the way to the royal palace. He abuses a passage from the Book of Thoth to unleash a terrifying nuclear explosion over Egypt, but even that has no effect on the mob; the Atonists are driven into exile shortly after.

"Once the band starts, everybody starts swaying from one side of the street to the other, especially those who drop in and follow the ones who have been to the funeral. These people are known as 'the second line' and they may be anyone passing along the street who wants to hear the music. The spirit hits them and they follow."

-Louis Armstrong

    Reed's retelling of the story of Moses exemplifies his claims about cultural appropriation that feature prominently in the rest of the book. Moses lets his greed (possibly represented by the ghost of Set?) take control of him, and in the process devolves from a seemingly friendly future musician to an inconceivably cruel, greedy, and vain ruler while failing to ever consider the consequences of his actions except in how they impact him. Right up until the end, Moses seemed genuinely bewildered how nobody could see the same greatness in him as he saw in himself. And while Moses may have been cartoonishly evil (as are the rest of the villains in the book,) such a portrayal may be a benefit to the clarity of Reed's argument: that commercialization of Black culture is frequent, violent, and always leaves something missing, even though the people doing it may believe thoroughly that they're doing the world a service. Perhaps, in Jethro's words, such actions always ultimately create a product that is "1/2 right, not all right." (177)