Word: reed
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Directed by CAROL REED...
...travesty of minstrelsy was that a white man in black face could get a laugh cheap because anything black was considered funny. Ishmael Reed (The Free-Lance Pall-Bearers) is a black man in white face who doesn't miss a travesty. Anything white or even tan is ripe for his satire...
...Reed's targets have been around at bargain prices for some time, but his laughs are not cheap. The outrageousness of his comic vision and the sinister coils of his prose beg comparison with William Burroughs. Survivors of the 1920s Harlem Renaissance may also be reminded of the orneriness of George Schuyler, the Black Mencken. Mumbo Jumbo is set-or rather cut loose-in the Harlem of the '20s, although Reed's ideas of renaissance slide all the way back to ancient Egypt. Like a street-hustling Norman O. Brown, Reed jives Western civilization into its mythological...
...scatological rereadings of history, Reed comes up with an idea called Neo-HooDooism, a pastiche of an imaginary, ancient African aesthetic and a rip-off from the HooDoo coven of black poets to which Reed belongs. What plot there is to Mumbo Jumbo deals with a search for the ancient, original HooDoo text...
...Reed himself keeps prancing on his drum, preaching the glories of HooDoo culture. It is a welcome alternative to the bludgeoning lectures of LeRoi (Imamu Baraka) Jones. Or is it? The club is a quicker and more merciful weapon than the feather. -R.Z. Sheppard