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ancianita

(36,014 posts) Tue Mar 3, 2020, 12:42 PM Mar 2020

MMM -- Jes' grew Week

Last edited Tue Mar 3, 2020, 01:25 PM - Edit history (1)

Two-fer Tuesday is a gnat buzzing in the R & B Universe. Posting Drake reminded me of that, and so…

1. This is ‘Jes grew week. Each day’s post will be a scratch on the surface of the miracle world of R & B, part of the culture which came from what writer Ishmael Reed has named Jes' grew.

2. Jes grew’ (from Reed’s 1972 novel, Mumbo Jumbo) mocked the chronic pathologizing of the new black aesthetic. Which included black music. Reed lays out how Pathologizers ...

"...could not point to a viral or bacterial pathogen responsible for the ‘disease.' Unorthodox researchers suggested that it may be neither, and that jes’ grew may be caused by something else entirely. So far, however, no papers have been published in major medical journals on the subject.

Symptoms of jes’ grew include: mediocrity intolerance, chronic questioning of authority, uncontrollable shaking of the hips and ass.
Jes’ grew is a unique sickness: it does not waste the victim away. Instead, it builds them up. It does not cloud their vision; it clears their vision.
Essentially, jes’ grew spreads itself by making itself attractive; patients infect themselves gladly, unaware they are helping spread the pandemic.

Therefore, the disease acts as a social and biological defense mechanism against a world and a people which betrayed them. It makes oppressors seem much more evil for harming a people so ‘cool.’

From archeology and anthropology [thank you, Zora Neale Hurston], there is no evidence to suggest that jes’ grew existed in ... populations prior to this pandemic. Therefore, we must conclude that it is the oppression that they faced which mutated this all-pervasive plague into the world. "

T-Bone Walker. “Goin’ To Chicago”