This painting was inspired by stories about voodoo ceremonies that Morrison heard as a child in Jamaica. In the center, three large animals, which appear to be communicating with each other, are seated in front of a pond at dusk. Though the painting's colors are vibrant, its scene is eerie and symbols of death abound. Small crosses mark graves, a mummified form rises apparitionally above the pond, and a spotted serpent hovers above. A transparent figure of a man is discernible in the pond, which is filled with dismembered parts of animals and people.

Morrison has always been fascinated by ponds at dusk, from which evil spirits emerge according to legend. In Zombie Jamboree, the figure wearing white was based in part on Hamlet's tragic heroine Ophelia, and in part by that powerful evocation of nature, Igor Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. The image of ghosts dancing across a pond in Benjamin Britten's opera, The Turn of the Screw, also influenced this painting, Morrison has said. The enigmatic floating figure recalls an event from the artist's childhood. An adult friend of the Morrison family was drowned--or committed suicide--in a pond at dusk, and this event has left an indelible imprint on the artist. In addition, the rising mummified figure is symbolic of death and resurrection, and is an image that appears in several of his works of the same period.

Morrison's African heritage can be seen in the upper section of the painting in which small dancing figures wearing African masks are joined by a skeletal form. These figures reinforce the voodoo themes of the work, which celebrate both the agony of death and the joy of resurrection.