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SAY THE WORD 
by Jon Cummings 
Nine young poets ignite the state with words piercing, funny and raw in Russell Simmons Def Poetry Jam 
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Broadway's Longacre Theatre may be the most prestigious showplace to date for the former cult phenomenon known as the poetry slam, but the nine poets who are electrifying audiences this month in Russell Simmons Def Poetry Jam on Broadway have good reason to feel right at home in the Big Apple.
    Theirs, after all, are the voices of the New York streets, uptown, downtown-all around town, really. Their rapid-fire rhymes meld the insistent, up-to-the-minute hip-hop beats that currently define urban culture with the razor's-edge sensibility of the Beats who converged on Greenwich Village half a century ago. 
    The poetry slam has its roots here, too. Though born in Chicago during the late 1980's, contemporary spoken-word performance blossomed in the downtown Manhattan neighborhood known as Alphabet City, at clubs such as the now-legendary Nuyorican Poets Café. As the Village Vanguard did for the 1950's hipsters and CBGB's did for the 1970's punks, the Nuyorican became the epicenter for a revolution among young poets from around the nation, who came here (and still do) to compete with others for the spotlight and the audience's affirmation. Indeed, each star of Def Poetry Jam long ago learned how to work the crowd at the Nuyorican.
    No demure Emily Dickinsons or bongo-backed Beats, this new generation: Steeped in hip-hop cadence and attitude, they arrive onstage ready to rock the house, offering up stinging diatribes, heartfelt homages and sometimes-plaintive, sometimes-hilarious evocations of modern life that earn not merely laughter and applause, but impassioned, vocal responses on a nightly basis. 

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Above (l.-r.): Suheir Hammad, Beau Sia and Georgia Me in Russell Simmons Def Poetry Jam on Broadway
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Among their heroes are influential musicians, a grandmother who taught cooking as an art form and the African-American men whom Atlanta-born Poet Georgia Me esteems as "niggods." Among their villains (and there are many) are former lovers, the white establishment, rap songs that glorify the almighty dollar and-in a delightful poem by the soulful Poetri - the makers of Krispy Kreme doughnuts, who he says spearhead a conspiracy "to keep the black man round."
    "Hip-hop is about giving a voice to the people, starting with the people in the projects, but now including all Americans who are locked out," notes Simmons, the rap impresario and longtime record-label owner for whom Def Poetry Jam is a first foray into producing on Broadway. "These poets all grew up on rap, and they speak the language of the people. They come on in jeans and hockey jerseys, and give voice to real, mainstream ideas that a lot of people never hear about."
    Simmons, whose empire has grown from hip-hop's seminal Def Jam label (home to Run-DMC, LL Cool J, Public Enemy and the Beastie Boys) to encompass the Phat Farm clothing line and the "Def Comedy Jam" series on HBO, admits that he came late to spoken-word performance. He first heard it in the snippets of poetry that have recently popped up between songs on CDs by rap stars such as Jay-Z, and he traced the poets to their unusual habitat, the national circuit of poetry slams.
    "In our culture today, the voices that are the angriest, that have the least hope, are the ones that get the most attention," Simmons says. "But silence is golden, too, and that silence allows folks to express their higher selves. 
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When there's silence, you've got to say something profound."
   Def Poetry Jam proves the point. Take, for example, the Brooklyn-born, Palestinian-American poet Suheir Hammad's "Exotic," in which she challenges her countrymen not to objectify or glamorize her as the "other" either racially or sexually. Or "Tito Puente," a tribute to the Latin-jazz pioneer (as well as to soul legend Sam Cooke) performed by poets Mayda del Valle and Lemon.
   "The poets are each talking about their own issues, but all of us in the audience can relate their experiences to something that communicates to our own lives," Simmons says. "It's all about what touches your heart. I mean, I never would have thought that Suheir would make the poem that touched my heart - my first leaning would have been toward a hip-hop poet. But she's saying, 'I gotta get up now, I gotta contribute something.'
    "And I don't care about Tito Puente, but I love the way Mayda and Lemon talk about how much he matters to them. Their words cross boundaries; they don't speak only to their own people."
     That ability to reach a wide audience - indeed, to grasp it by the throat - won each of these none poets his or her spot in Def Poetry Jam. All regulars on the slam circuit - several of them are national Grand Slam winners as individuals or as part of teams from their hometowns - they were first culled by Simmons and director Stan Lathan for a series of "Def Poetry Jam" specials on HBO.
     And now Broadway. "These poets have gotten such great responses from this show that they have come, I guess, to be seen as the leaders of this movement," Simmons says. "I love the nine poets we've got, but you know that for every one of them, there's probably at least a couple more out there who are just as good. Maybe because of this show, they'll all get themselves heard." 

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"These poets grew up on rap, and they speak the language of the people...and give voice to ideas that a lot of people never heard about." -Russell Simmons

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