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In this paper I discuss Ishmael Reed's novel Mumbo Jumbo as an example of an open and free form which jazz and voodoo use as their structural principles. The starting point of this paper explores the idea of improvisation as a signifier for freedom, echoing the very features of jazz and voodoo. Reed uses a western style narrative in the form of a novel, while simultaneously resisting traditional narration by using fragmentation, polyphony, open form and elements of postmodernism as his own answer to the contemporary sterile and predictable Western narration. Reed's "Jes Grew" epidemic is seen as a new manifestation of improvisation and freedom which undermines Western monotheism, history, and rationality. The importance of Mumbo Jumbo lies in successfully challenging the Western logocentric, mainly white, rational history through an unusual and improvised free form. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]