Poet’s Appearance Creates Discord

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The New York Sun

In his inaugural address at the long-awaited opening for the swank Jazz at Lincoln Center arts space in Columbus Circle yesterday, the Pulitzer Prize-winning musician Wynton Marsalis trumpeted a roster of celebrated guests scheduled to appear in the next few weeks, from the comic Bill Cosby to the actress Glenn Close. One name Mr. Marsalis omitted was that of Amiri Baraka, who was ousted as poet laureate of New Jersey for suggesting in a poem that Israel knew in advance about the September 11 attacks.


Yesterday, Lincoln Center came under criticism for booking Mr. Baraka.


“With all the talent that exists in the jazz community, it’s very sad that organizers would scrape the bottom of the barrel to put on a bigot and an anti-Semite,” said the national director of the Anti-Defamation League, Abraham Foxman. “There’s so many good people to deliver the spoken word, why pick him?”


Efforts yesterday to reach Mr. Baraka, 70, a Newark resident who as a playwright and streetwise activist of the late 1960s was known as LeRoi Jones, were unsuccessful.


In an interview yesterday with The New York Sun, Mr. Marsalis, who serves as artistic director for Jazz at Lincoln Center, defended the group’s decision to have Mr. Baraka appear at the new jazz center, which was built for $129 million over the past eight years with a blend of public and private funds.


The events featuring Mr. Baraka are designed to celebrate spoken-word artists, and Mr. Marsalis said that in the syncopated, lyrical genre it would be “irresponsible not to include him.”


Mr. Baraka raised ire among New Jersey legislators and anti-defamation groups two years ago with a controversial stanza toward the end of a poem entitled “Somebody Blew Up America,” which suggests that Israeli officials had conspired in the planning of the World Trade Center attacks. The stanza reads: “Who Knew the World Trade Center was gonna get bombed/Who told 4000 Israeli workers at the Twin Towers/To stay home that day/Why did Sharon stay away?”


After he was first asked to resign by Governor McGreevey in October 2002, Mr. Baraka refused, saying his poem had been misinterpreted. He issued a 4,700-word statement on his personal Web site in which he called the ADL’s criticism of his poem “an attempt to defame me” and efforts to brand him as an anti-Semite “trashy propaganda.” Two months later, state legislators voted to remove Mr. Baraka and to abolish the $10,000-a-year laureate’s post.


Mr. Baraka is scheduled to appear in the October 28-29 event along with writers including Sonia Sanchez and Gil Scott-Heron, Mr. Marsalis said he felt confident Mr. Baraka would not make anti-Semitic statements.


“We do not endorse anti-Semitism or anti-any-kind-of-group,” Mr. Marsalis said, but he added: “This is a country of free speech and what that means is that people are free to speak their minds.”


The jazz center’s chairman of the executive committee, Jonathan Rose, said he was unaware Mr. Baraka was scheduled to perform. The hall that holds the new jazz center is named for Mr. Rose’s father, Frederick Rose, the real-estate magnate and philanthropist.


Jonathan Rose said the board of directors for Jazz at Lincoln Center has decided not to meddle in the jazz center’s artistic or scheduling decisions. But Mr. Rose, like Mr. Marsalis, also said that inviting Mr. Baraka to perform was a testament to the jazz center’s commitment to freedom of speech. “What we have to fear is the repression of ideas, not ideas themselves,” Mr. Rose said. Of Mr. Baraka’s upcoming appearance, he said: “I’m interested to hear what he has to say.”


The chairwoman of the 37-member board, Lisa Schiff, who is managing director of the musical production company After Nine Holdings, and a board member who co-founded Atlantic Records, Ahmet Ertegun, both said they were unaware that Mr. Baraka would be performing but were not opposed. “I would never want to endorse anti-Semitism,” Mr. Ertegun said, “but that does not mean his poems should be restricted.”


Other prominent New Yorkers among the directors include the television correspondent Ed Bradley; the commissioner the National Basketball Association, David Stern, and the retired chairman of Philip Morris, George Weissman.


The New York Sun

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