Chapter 4

Although Chapter 4 of Mumbo Jumbo is relatively short, I thought the insight it provides about

the American 1920s and America as an entity was really interesting. The only part that I didn’t

understand at all was the very first sentence of the chapter, where Reed talks about Charlie Parker,

one of the most influential jazz musicians in American history. The sentence reads, “Charlie Parker,

the houngan (a word derived from n’gana gana) for whom there was no master adept enough to

award him the Asson, is born.” Again, I didn’t get the relevance of this sentence, so I looked into the

meanings and historical context behind some of the vocabulary used. Reed refers to Parker as a “houngan” which is basically a Voodoo priest or chief of the spirits.

This parallel seems clear enough based on the prevalence of Voodoo religion in the novel, but

learning about the “Asson” further explores the correlation between Voodoo tradition and

African American jazz culture. Generally, Asson is the ceremony where the title of priest is

bestowed upon those deemed worthy by existing an houngan. Interestingly, there is a Haitian

myth of a man named Titon, who claimed that there was no houngan great enough to give him

an asson. This is a direct parallel to Reed’s description of Charlie Parker. Another important

aspect of the story of Titon is that while he is more than qualified to become a houngan, he is

too poor to afford the ceremony. This ties into the idea that African American artists not being

acknowledged in the way that they deserved to be due to the systemic implication that they

were second class citizens.  

Source: Postmodernism and Its Others: The Fiction of Ishmael Reed, Kathy Acker, and Don
DeLillo by Jeffrey Ebbeson