The CMJ Music Marathon has been around since the early 1980’s and has continued to bring a wide variety of music in New York, but with this new questioning of the owner’s, Adam Klein, past has questioned the future of the music marathon.
According to Pitchfork, Klein had told Pitchfork that “CMJ will absolutely happen this year. We’ll share more about our 2016 and 2017 program soon,” and he would reiterate this statement in any interviews he had, but he would never go into deal of what the plans were for the music marathon. He did, however, tell them “I don’t know what assurances I can give you other than that this is my job, and my business, and my investment, and my sense of focus.”
Back in the summer of 1993, Klein was arrested and charged for fraud, theft and forgery while he stepped off the plane at Johannesburg airport. He had ran a building supply company, in South Africa, called Boumat. During his time in Boumat, Klein had been accused of directing two firms to inflate their bills and forging a letter to verify a deal.
At the Johannesburg Regional court, Klein was fined thousands of dollars, to which he said “It was a foreign exchange transaction, which is not recognized by the U.S. as an issue at all, because what I was doing was transferring funds from what I was earning in South Africa to America, and didn’t complete the forms properly. It was an administrative screw-up.”
Ever since these series of events, Klein has been dealing with many lawsuits, like with John Scher and his Metropolitian Talent company, on the topics of ownership, debt or actions taken. In all of these lawsuits, he has denied allegations.
The CMJ Music Marathon’s fate has been uncertain, with no lineup or venue information being posted on the event’s website.
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