“Doof,” the sound of muffled bass,.…
… gives
its name to Australia’s home-grown bush raves.
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Music is our witness, and
our ally. The beat is the confession which recognises, changes and conquers time.
Then, history becomes a garment we can wear and share, and not a cloak in which to
hide; and time becomes a friend.
James
Baldwin, U.S. writer (1924-1987)
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Environmental and techno
groups unite in the Australian bush
to mix alternative politics and artistic expression. Yet tourism
may spoil the scene
 Two
and a half hour’s drive through Australia’s dense bush north of Sydney, coloured
lights pulse on the crest of a hill as the low rumble of bass creeps across the immense
forest. At the height of summer, the bush surrounding Byron Bay is alive with underground
techno events. A far cry from the regimented and often alienating world of clubs
that electronic music in Sydney and other major cities have become captive to, these
events offer an escape from city life and a dose of social politics. The open space
seemingly provides the freedom needed for a creative mix of artistic and political
action. But the flow of foreign tourists may arrest the scene’s development.
To some extent, tourism is at the origin of the local techno scene. Building on the
history of gay dance parties which thrived in Sydney from the early 1980s, British
tourists began bringing new music and ideas in 1989 on the back of the UK rave explosion.
They organised underground events using the same tactics to evade police at home:
low-key advertising and venues announced by phone number on the night. They also
began setting up import record stores and became leading DJs. But by 1991-2, locals
had taken over. Every weekend, four or more events could each draw several thousand
people.
Meanwhile, The Vibe Tribe–a loose group of former punks, squatters and community
activists–began holding free parties in Sydney’s public spaces to blend grassroots
community activism with the energy and futurism of rave culture. They also began
setting up fundraisers for various progressive community organizations while forging
alliances with local environmental groups to highlight issues such as indigenous
land rights, the loss of public space to private interests, and nuclear disarmament.
Electronic music was integrated into everything from community festivals to party-aligned
protest events such as “Reclaim The Streets” in Sydney: multiple soundsystems were
wheeled out at major road intersections, drawing thousands of spontaneous revellers
to highlight the environmental effects of the automobile industry.
But by 1995, repressive regulations and police raids forced the raves off the streets
and into the controlled confines of clubs. The Vibe Tribe disbanded and some leading
members like Kol Diamond went to Byron Bay, where environmental alliances had been
forged by other collectives like Electric Tipi. “Over the last twenty years or so
Byron has become very much the nerve centre of ‘alternative lifestyling’ in this
country,” explains Diamond. “The various feral subcultures and capitalist Greenies
mix freely with New Age gurus. They sit lazily in Bohemian cafes discussing the politics
of making money and genetically modified soya beans whilst surfing the days away…
The local council is Green [party], the local newspaper is heavily anti-development
and critical of large corporate businesses, and it seems like the whole town and
surrounding areas have in common a desire to keep the Big Mac out of town and keep
low-density, low-impact development as the main strategy, largely because Byron Bay
is totally dependent on tourism.”
Diamond helped to cultivate the cultural landscape by setting up recording studios
and a local record label, Organarchy. The small raves of the 1990s are now regular
events, with the largest pitched overseas through the Internet, while drawing hundreds
from Sydney and Melbourne. “The parties are very popular, very loud and thus very
controversial,” says Diamond.
Chris Gibson, a lecturer in geography at the University of New South Wales and avid
raver, spent six months in Byron Bay to map the music scene’s internal politics and
its position in a network of global music exchange. “There is an ongoing debate in
Byron about whether to tap into the backpacker market or remain locally focused,”
says Gibson. “The issue here is whether local political imperatives are necessarily
compatible with a less politically-specific global trance music mentality associated
with backpacker tourism.”
Take the case of local DJs fundraising for a forest blockade. Are backpackers really
interested in the forest or just attracted by the “alternative” nature of the event?
Will local events become overshadowed by larger, purely musical ones with the drawcard
of DJs from the global trance scene?
Diamond is less concerned. “Maybe this was the risk four years ago when a very tight
crew of [international] trance DJs and promoters hit this area very suddenly and
in a rather calculated move,” he says. “They were looking for a new foothold with
which to exploit their corporate agendas. Byron quickly became very fashionable to
visit but it was always very expensive to live in compared to Thailand and India,
so only those who actually did desire a more alternative eco-friendly way stayed.”
The debate over tourism is now spilling beyond the music community to fuel a conflict
with local authorities. Tensions erupted over plans for a techno Millennium Eve.
According to Diamond, “three techno parties were threatening to attract more people
and more attention than the town’s official celebrations.”
Tourist
dollars
To begin with,
the local council does not make any money from the free-spirited bush parties. Second,
these bring-your-own-booze events tend to draw large crowds away from bars and venues
in town. The rave crackdown in Sydney (1995) was largely due to pressure from the
alcohol industry. So it was not a total surprise to find “police harassment at the
parties all throughout the night,” as Diamond describes, “from set-up to dawn leading
to the confiscation of equipment and charges being laid.” For Diamond, the crackdown
represented the council’s decision “to put the tourist dollar before the artistic
desires of the local community.”
With the party season quieting down over the colder months, Byron crews are waiting
to see how the political climate develops. Meanwhile, Organarchy is working to release
more music from Byron locals to reinforce artistic and political independence. “All
struggle is local,” says Diamond, “global-anything [music industry, tourism, etc.]
reeks straight away of something to be consumed in large doses…”.
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