showreel

“Reggae is an essential part of what we do and who we are in this borough”

Kristian Aspinall, Director of Culture and Community Safety at Croydon Council

A grassroots-up approach to Croydon’s London Borough of Culture (LBC) year has put Mad Professor’s Ariwa record label centre stage. Becca Leathlean visits a new Mad Professor exhibition by Drop Da Biscuit to find out more. 

“Mad Professor wasn’t in the original LBC proposal,” confesses Kristian Aspinall, Director of Culture and Community Safety at Croydon Council. “He came in because of a shift in plan, which came through our grassroots-up approach.”

After plotting their original LBC bid pre-Covid, the council declared effective bankruptcy in 2022 and had disbanded the Culture team when the time came to develop the programme.

“We were left with a tiny core team, so we entrusted people like Michael (Drop Da Biscuit) and other grassroots partners to develop the programme,” Kristian explains.

“One of our focuses was ‘seldom heard histories’. When Michael suggested a project with Croydon’s own Mad Professor, we had to make sure it was incorporated.”

The exhibition, ‘A Celebration of the Music and Career of Mad Professor’ was first unveiled at February’s sellout Ariwa showcase at the Fairfield Halls. Presented by Drop Da Biscuit, the night opened with a live set from Mad Professor himself and featured Lover’s Rock star Sandra Cross and her choir alongside younger ‘Modern Roots’ artists on the label: Askala Selassie, I Jah and Abel Miller. 

With the entire Fairfield complex open to them, the audience could chill in the café area and view the exhibition at their leisure – 12 album covers complete with QR codes enabling patrons to hear and download the music, plus a brief history of Mad Professor by David Katz and four pieces of newly commissioned art.

The Fairfield Halls exhibition only stayed up for one day before transferring to Croydon Museum last month, where a further 200 album covers have been added via a video loop. 

Starting with a seminal example of Prof’s own work – the first album in his 11-year Dub Me Crazy series (1982), the exhibition takes us on a journey through Lover’s Rock, Sound System, Dub, Toasting and beyond, represented by legends such as Carroll Thompson, Jah Shaka, Lee Scratch Perry and U-Roy. Releases from UK toaster Macka B and musician Black Steel also feature, along with the cover of No Protection, Prof’s acclaimed psychedelic dub remix of Massive Attack’s 1994 LP Protection. On the 20-minute video loop visitors can view more Ariwa releases by the likes of Horace Andy, Cedric Myton, Earl 16 and Yellowman. With commissions from artists as diverse as punk band The Orb, Sade, Gaudi and Jamiroquai and a catalogue of some 300 plus albums, it’s clear that Prof enjoys a great diversity of musical genres - and you’ll soon wonder who he hasn’t worked with.

While the album covers include many by top reggae illustrators such as Tony McDermott and Stephen Bliss, the newly commissioned art comprises two portraits of Mad Professor painted by Ken ‘Yahw’ McCalla and two digital prints by another Ariwa cover designer, Ohoroho. 

Says Ken McCalla: “Through meeting Mad Professor, I got an understanding of how thoughtful he is about the music. That helped me to develop the portrait of him in a thinking pose.

“I used a loose style to show the inventiveness he produces in his sets. In the other painting I wanted to highlight the maze of wires, seeing him in the background and the mass of technical stuff around him. He does a lot of talking with his hands, so I was trying to put multiple hands there in the picture.”

Drop Da Biscuit’s Mad Professor exhibition is complemented by the Rewind exhibition upstairs at Croydon Clocktower – a tour of the borough’s musical heritage through objects, images and stories. It features musicians across the eras – from 19th Century composer Samuel Coleridge Taylor to Captain Sensible of The Damned, dubstep idols Skream and Benga, reggae artists Desmond Dekker and Mad Professor, the late Kirsty MacColl and contemporary rap and hip-hop artist Nadia Rose.

So, what has the public response been to the Borough of Culture initiatives?

Says Kristian Aspinall: “To be honest, it’s been so positive its slightly unbelievable! Over the year, we had 655,000 audience members and provided opportunities for more than 16,000 young people. It’s far more than we ever anticipated and, by the end, 95% of people were saying, ‘we love this’.”

Croydon’s grassroots approach has brought valuable new opportunities across the board, thanks to the ideas and connections of the groups now involved. 

The Council is getting ready to build on this. Says Mayor of Croydon, Jason Perry: “London Borough of Culture wasn’t just a year to be over and done, and we now have around a £2m fund for the groups to carry on. Thanks to the Borough of Culture, our museum has been re-accredited by the Arts Council, too. We’re funding exhibitions like Michael’s. It’s so important that we keep the legacy running.”

‘A Celebration of the Music and Career of Mad Professor’ runs until 7 February 2025

Open Weds & Fri, 11am-4pm

Croydon Clocktower Ground Floor, Temporary Exhibition Gallery

Rewind runs until 31 December 2024

Open Tues, Weds, Fri & Sat 11am-5pm

Croydon Clocktower Level 1, Then and Now Gallery