"Got My Mojo Working" is a blues song written by Preston "Red" Foster and first recorded by R&B singer Ann Cole in 1956. Foster's lyrics describe several amulets or talismans, called mojo, which are associated with hoodoo, an early African-American folk-magic belief system.
Got My Mojo Working
Mojo (African-American culture)
A mojo, in the African-American spiritual practice called Hoodoo, is an amulet consisting of a flannel bag containing one or more magical items. It is a "prayer in a bag", or a spell that can be carried with or on the host's body. Alternative American names for the mojo bag include gris-gris bag, hand, mojo hand, toby, nation sack, conjure hand, lucky hand, conjure bag, juju bag, trick bag, tricken bag, root bag, and jomo. The word mojo also refers to magic and charms. Mojo containers are bags, gourds, bottles, shells, and other containers. The making of mojo bags in Hoodoo is a system of African-American occult magic. The creation of mojo bags is an esoteric system that involves sometimes housing spirits inside of bags for either protection, healing, or harm and to consult with spirits. Other times mojo bags are created to manifest results in a person's life such as good-luck, money or love.
A West African Tuareg gris-gris
Bambara people, West African Muslims from Senegal brought their knowledge of conjure bags to Louisiana.
Minkisi (Kongo - Central Africa), World Museum Liverpool - Minkisi cloth bundles were found on slave plantations in the United States in the Deep South. Minksi bundles influenced the creation of mojo bags in Hoodoo.
A petition paper with a verse from the Quran is placed inside a gris-gris (mojo bag) made by enslaved West African Muslims in the Americas.