Hedi LaMarr Photography
A Mad Lit performance on August 11, 2023.
One of the city's first rap groups from the early 1990s, the Black Poets Society, reunited for a show at the Mad Lit celebration of the 50th Anniversary of Hip-Hop in 2023.
After the pandemic shutdowns and fallout from the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, Rob Dz wanted to “do something that pushed the revitalization of downtown forward,” says the local emcee and hip-hop educator.
He also hoped to create something that would draw people of color to State Street. “One of the biggest drawbacks for Black people in Madison is that downtown has never felt very inclusive for us.”
Five years ago, with the help of the nonprofit Urban Community Arts Network, Dz created the summer concert series called Mad Lit, which focused on giving a stage to local hip-hop artists and other Black and brown musicians.
“The idea was to light up downtown, so that’s where we came up with the name,” he says.
After its initial run of shows in 2021, Mad Lit grew, drawing about 12,000 folks last year to four Friday night concerts. Black and brown residents made up 80% of the audience, organizers say.
But there will be no Mad Lit series this year: “We just don’t have the money to do it,” Dz says. “It’s a huge letdown.”
Due to changes in a grant program, the city stopped funding the events.
Dz says he’s grateful to the city for previous support and understands that budgets are tight. Also that “DEI is the first stuff to get cut.”
But, he adds, “you hear all these conversations about Madison being progressive and what they want and how they want people involved — we're doing the work of trying to get everybody involved and we've done it for years. I think we built the legitimacy and the groundwork for this. How do we not figure out a way to make this move forward?”
The loss of the concert series is significant for both attendees and artists, says Karen Reece, who is co-president of UCAN with Dz.
“The obvious impact of Mad Lit not being there this year is missing an opportunity to see Black and Latinx artists and other artists of color performing on a big stage in the heart of our city,” she says. “These artists aren't necessarily going to find another venue where they can perform at prime time anywhere else this year.”
One of Reece’s favorite shows from Mad Lit’s past was the jazz-soul-funk fusion of KinFolk. Dz says he loved the DJ and Latin music nights because “it turned the top of State Street into one big dance party.” Both point to the celebration of the 50th anniversary of hip-hop events in 2023, which included the reunion shows of Madison’s earliest rap groups Fresh Force and the Black Poets Society, as a special milestone for the series.
Mad Lit, through its school music programs, beatmaking contests, and professional development seminars, became a flagship for UCAN, whose mission is to enrich Madison’s cultural offerings, build inclusivity, and promote the local hip-hop scene.
Matthew Mikolajewski, director of the city’s economic development division, calls Mad Lit “a great program.”
“It attracted a large number of people in the evening, in the summer, and it was very positive,” he says, adding that he appreciated how the concerts supported not only musicians but also “other entrepreneurs that were selling various products.” The businesses on State Street also benefited, he adds.
Mad Lit, which received roughly $30,000 each year from the city, was originally funded through the Small Business Equity and Recovery Program, which has since evolved into the city’s Small Business Development Program. The program is now focused on investing funding directly into small businesses, not nonprofits and events, says Mikolajewski. As such, he adds, “Mad Lit/UCAN doesn’t qualify for those funds.”
The city notified UCAN organizers of the funding change for 2026 last year, and Reece and Dz acknowledge that the funding loss was not a surprise. Dz, who suffered a serious health setback this year, says he and other organizers didn’t have enough time to secure other financial sponsors for this year.
Last year the series cost $60,000 to produce. To make up the difference between what the city funded and what concert series’ total costs, UCAN previously received donations and sponsorships from TruStage, American Family Insurance, Madison Gas and Electric and others.
Says Dz: “We just weren't able to dig our feet into the fundraising process the way we wanted to.”
There is hope for a return of the concert series.
Mikolajewski says the city will soon be announcing new funding for downtown programming for 2027 “and any entity that's interested can apply for that.”
While they may apply for a grant, Reece and Dz say they no longer want to be so dependent on city funding.
“We’ll be moving to a model where individuals are providing the bulk of the funding and then we may also ramp up some of the corporate sponsorships,” Reece says, adding that she wants to “engage more community members into volunteering for setup and takedown [and] helping with some of the marketing, making sure that we have more people that are part of the community that are helping contribute.
“Mad Lit will absolutely be back in 2027,” promises Reece.
Dz agrees. “As long as we commit to really trying to elevate the voices of everyone here and work to be a part of the city, I think Madison will give back and help us make it sustainable.”
