LEARNING IN COMMUNITY

Music builds bridges

Tranby was committed to making change happen – that meant never backing down from making a stand on principle, but it also meant negotiation and cooperation – building strength by working together for shared goals. This was what cooperative organisation was built on and it was what the union movement stressed.

One of the activities around Tranby – Around the Meeting Tree – that students and staff could all take part in was music! Making and sharing music was something that Aboriginal communities had always enjoyed – from ceremonial life through to country and western around the campfire.

Many people at Tranby – staff and students – were unsettled in the 1980s about the coming government Bicentennial which just celebrated the British invasion. They wanted to protest against it, but they also wanted to build new ways forward where everyone could share in making a new future, one that did not need racism or discrimination or poverty

From the mid-1980s, Tranby was the meeting place for the Bicentennial Protest Group and the Long March for Justice, Hope and Freedom organising committee, which was planning the transport, accommodation and support for the many Aboriginal people who wanted to come to Sydney to protest against a celebration of the Bicentennial which ignored the invasion and the suffering of Aboriginal people. Tranby also became the meeting place for the group planning something which would bring people together. This was based on the idea that music builds connections between people. The movement and the events eventually took the name of Building Bridges.

In Sydney since 1983, the Rock Against Racism concerts had been backed by Radio Redfern, the Aboriginal-run radio station that had begun around the same time. Tiga Bayles was an important announcer and spokesperson for Radio Redfern’s commitment to broadcasting Aboriginal people’s music – whether it was contemporary - rock, punk or rap - or country-and-western or traditional, as well as news about the politics and arts events there were important for Aboriginal communities. This movement had grown out of the Rock Against Racism concerts, first in Melbourne and then in Sydney in 1983. These concerts brought black and white musicians and audiences together to challenge the idea that Australia would always be divided by racism. Instead, the concerts offered hope that justice could grow through shared music performance and learning. The Melbourne organisers Bruce McGuinness and Gary Foley remained actively involved in supporting the Sydney Rock Against Racism concerts. In 1983 Gary Foley moved to Sydney to take up the role as the Executive Director for the Aboriginal Arts Board at the Australia Council and Bondi Maori community activist Jim George started broadcasting on Radio Redfern.

In 1984 Kotahitanga 84 and Friends, a local Bondi Maori social action initiative, started hosting music concerts at the Bondi Pavilion on Bondi Beach. Many people in the Bondi Maori community supported Aboriginal people’s opposition to racism and continuing colonial control. Kevin Cook had lived and worked in New Zealand some years before as a builders labourer and he had met many Maori and learned from them about the history of the British invasion of Aotearoa, the Maori name for their country.

Jim George a community activist and social entrepreneur from the Bondi Maori Community was one of the founding members of Kotahitanga 84 and Friends – he was foundational to building relationships with the Sydney Aboriginal community. He started broadcasting on Radio Redfern in 1983 and is still broadcasting today every Saturday afternoon sharing music and political commentary. In 1984 Kotahitanga and Friends hosted their first event at the Bondi Pavilion working with Tony Duke who was then employed as a community arts project officer with Waverley Council. The initial event was presented in partnership with Radio Redfern, Tranby and a number of Trade Unions. The event was presented as “Waitangi Day is a Fraud” and challenged the New Zealand national day while hosting a program of Aboriginal and Maori music and speakers. The event saw Waverley Council respond in a deeply, though predictably, racist way and worked with the NSW Police to have mounted police stationed at Bondi Beach to curb any protest.

1986 Kotahitanga 84 and Friends worked with Radio Redfern, Tranby and the Trade Unions to present a nine-day South Pacific Festival (25 January through 2 February 1986) with events and activities centred at the Bondi pavilion as well as at the Bondi Beach Public school and the Chauvel Cinema in Paddington (The Asia Pacific Film Festival). The event was an expression of identity and solidarity with Indigenous peoples across the South Pacific and Asia regions. It was decided to acknowledge the 26 January Invasion Day as a day of mourning and that the only activity was to play Radio Redfern live through a speaker system within the Pavilion. Circumstances presented and Radio Redfern was broadcast over the external speakers and across Bondi Beach with the wind picking up the sound and travelling it to other Waverley Council beaches including Tamarama and Clovelly – it was said that this honest cultural sharing resulted in the telephone switchboard at Waverley Council being jammed for the first time in 125 years.

In Sydney since 1983, the Rock Against Racism concerts had been backed by Radio Redfern, the Aboriginal-run radio station that had begun around the same time. Tiga Bayles was an important announcer and spokesperson for Radio Redfern’s commitment to broadcasting Aboriginal people’s music – whether it was contemporary - rock, punk or rap - or country-and-western or traditional, as well as news about the politics and arts events there were important for Aboriginal communities. This movement had grown out of the Rock Against Racism concerts, first in Melbourne and then in Sydney in 1983. These concerts brought black and white musicians and audiences together to challenge the idea that Australia would always be divided by racism. Instead, the concerts offered hope that justice could grow through shared music performance and learning. The Melbourne organisers Bruce McGuinness and Gary Foley remained actively involved in supporting the Sydney Rock Against Racism concerts. In 1983 Gary Foley moved to Sydney to take up the role as the Executive Director for the Aboriginal Arts Board at the Australia Council and Bondi Maori community activist Jim George started broadcasting on Radio Redfern.

In 1984 Kotahitanga 84 and Friends, a local Bondi Maori social action initiative, started hosting music concerts at the Bondi Pavilion on Bondi Beach. Many people in the Bondi Maori community supported Aboriginal people’s opposition to racism and continuing colonial control. Kevin Cook had lived and worked in New Zealand some years before as a builders labourer and he had met many Maori and learned from them about the history of the British invasion of Aotearoa, the Maori name for their country.

Jim George a community activist and social entrepreneur from the Bondi Maori Community was one of the founding members of Kotahitanga 84 and Friends – he was foundational to building relationships with the Sydney Aboriginal community. He started broadcasting on Radio Redfern in 1983 and is still broadcasting today every Saturday afternoon sharing music and political commentary. In 1984 Kotahitanga and Friends hosted their first event at the Bondi Pavilion working with Tony Duke who was then employed as a community arts project officer with Waverley Council. The initial event was presented in partnership with Radio Redfern, Tranby and a number of Trade Unions. The event was presented as “Waitangi Day is a Fraud” and challenged the New Zealand national day while hosting a program of Aboriginal and Maori music and speakers. The event saw Waverley Council respond in a deeply, though predictably, racist way and worked with the NSW Police to have mounted police stationed at Bondi Beach to curb any protest.

1986 Kotahitanga 84 and Friends worked with Radio Redfern, Tranby and the Trade Unions to present a nine-day South Pacific Festival (25 January through 2 February 1986) with events and activities centred at the Bondi pavilion as well as at the Bondi Beach Public school and the Chauvel Cinema in Paddington (The Asia Pacific Film Festival). The event was an expression of identity and solidarity with Indigenous peoples across the South Pacific and Asia regions. It was decided to acknowledge the 26 January Invasion Day as a day of mourning and that the only activity was to play Radio Redfern live through a speaker system within the Pavilion. Circumstances presented and Radio Redfern was broadcast over the external speakers and across Bondi Beach with the wind picking up the sound and travelling it to other Waverley Council beaches including Tamarama and Clovelly – it was said that this honest cultural sharing resulted in the telephone switchboard at Waverley Council being jammed for the first time in 125 years.

In response to the needs expressed from the organising group for the Long March for Justice, Hope and Freedom, Kotahitanga 84 and Friends booked the Bondi Pavilion for the weekend of 23 and 24 January 1988 to present a series of fund-raising concerts. In late December Kotahitanga 84 and Friends were approached by Gary Foley, Kevin Cook, Peter Garret (Midnight Oil) and film maker David Bradbury to focus the event into a one day showcase to grab some positive media as the mainstream media were, months out, starting to feed negative stories of protest and civil disobedience as the preparations grew to host the largest assembly of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in modern history.

The event at the Bondi Pavilion was badged as Building Bridges, to symbolise the movement’s hopes for a shared future of cooperation and justice amidst the protests and division driven by the Federal government and the mainstream media. The Building Bridges movement – with that vision of justice and cooperation – was born as people poured off the buses and headed in to share the music and to stand together black and white in solidarity and recognition of the unceded sovereignty of the First Nations Peoples of the land now called Australia.

Kevin Cook, Tony Duke and Jim George remembered that first concert in 1988:

Kevin Cook: It was very emotional, that gig at Bondi. You know, when you seen all the people coming in, your heart swole up. Talking to other people later, some of the musicians, they got caught up in that too. But from an Aboriginal perspective, everybody was pumped up. Really pumped up about the concert and later on, the march.

Tony Duke: The biggest mob turned out. And then on top of all of them, there were the buses arriving from the bush, with people just hopping off, never seen the beach before! I remember that we had a reasonable price on the door – around five dollars. It wasn’t much but we had wanted to raise a bit of money for the march. But for safety reasons we just had to throw the doors open. There were just too many people. We weren’t ready for it or able to deal with it. And of course just the spirit of the event was about the connections of bringing people together. Why wait at Bondi Beach on a beautiful day for half an hour to try to get in? Just come in! And so we walked around with the buckets. We ended up with a couple of grand in the buckets at the end of the day. And that was the start of Building Bridges! I remember then talking with Kevin, and it was like ‘Well, what can we do now? We’ve got some money and we’ve got a lot of interest’. So we started to organise then for the concerts later on.

Jim George: David Bradbury the filmmaker came and documented the concert. We had five cameras and we got 120 hours of footage from that first one at the Bondi Pavilion. I remember it had a strong Black line-up. We had Roger Knox there. And it was Yothu Yindi’s first Sydney gig – we billed them as Koori Dancers! They were down working with the Swamp Jockeys doing some stuff. We had Black Lace and we had to turn the power off, ’cause they wouldn’t get off stage! (George (2014:106), citing interview transcript quoted in Cook and Goodall (2013:351))

Following the success of the first Building Bridges event a small group kept meeting at Tranby under Kevin Cook’s guidance and set up the Building Bridges Association as a cultural support project for the National Coalition of Aboriginal Organisations. Throughout 1988, the Building Bridges group worked with Indigenous and non-Indigenous musicians, their management and record companies to bring together an album, Australia has a Black History, to raise funds for the National Coalition of Aboriginal Organisations. The musicians donated one track to the album and many performed at the 26 January 1989 Building Bridges Concert at the Bondi Pavilion to launch the double album while others performed on 26 February 1989 at the Story Hall in Melbourne for the second launch concert. The album featured dramatic cover art, a stunning line up of artists and songs, some of them sung in Aboriginal languages, and with powerful cover messages from Gary Foley and Tom Keneally. (Keneally extract from his submission on a new Preamble to the Australian Constitution. Reed, Liz (2006). “"...different lives in different places": A Space for Multiple White Identities through Aboriginal Rock Music". In Lynette Russell (ed.). Boundary writing: an exploration of race, culture, and gender binaries in contemporary Australia. University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 0-8248-3048-2.)

The Building Bridges Association worked to strengthen the collaborations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australian musicians and artists. At the same time, it strengthened its commitment to support Maori, both in Australia and in Aotearoa, as they rejected the validity of the Waitangi Treaty, officially celebrated on February 6th each year. (George 2014) After the launch of the Building Bridges: Australia has a Black History album in 1989, the Building Bridges concerts continued on 26th January each year until 1992 when they were taken up by Rosalie Graham and Chris McGuigan from the Aboriginal Artists Management and were then staged at La Perouse as Survival Day in 1992 before Koori Radio / Gadigal Information Service (the extension of Radio Redfern) took up the event which is now the popular Yabun Festival.

Paul Kelly was one of the artists involved and his experience showed how learning and cooperation were central to the message of hope that Building Bridges embodied. He met Kev Carmody through the process of developing the album and together they wrote From Little Things Big Things Grow, which Paul Kelly performed first at the launch of the album. Aboriginal artists like Yothu Yindi, Kev Carmody and Archie Roach became better known partly through their collaborations with the non-Indigenous performers in the Building Bridges concerts. Paul Kelly has recalled how much he and other white artists learned from the opportunity they had to work closely with Indigenous musicians. (Cook and Goodall 2013) In 1995, Kelly travelled with Kev Carmody, Leah Purcell and other Aboriginal artists to Aotearoa where Maori had developed the Building Bridges program with the same fundamental theme of working and learning together but with the goal of uniting older and younger generations of Maori, who had become distanced from each other in the process of urbanisation and sometimes migration to Australia. (George 2014)

In September 1991, for the first time on Australian public radio the Building Bridges organisation succeeded in presenting “Building Bridges across Australia”. The broadcast was between 9th and 11th September and linked public radio stations in Sydney, Melbourne, Darwin, Perth, Adelaide, Hobart, Brisbane, Alice Springs and Townsville presenting a series of programmes featuring Aboriginal news, views and entertainment. This included contemporary Aboriginal music with profiles on bands, a women’s music concert live from Melbourne, a music festival from Darwin, AIDS education programs and a selection of “beat the grog” music from Central Australia. (George 2014)

Kevin Cook and Tranby continued to be involved with the Building Bridges Association throughout, supporting the concerts organised in Bowraville in 1991 (to bring together the communities after the tragic and still unexplained disappearances of three children) and to Fiji in the aftermath of the coup in 1990 (with strong support for Indigenous assertion but also a commitment to fostering dialogue with unionists, across the racial diversity of Fiji society), as well as recognising the centrality of Aboriginal and Maori women both in music and in the campaigns for an end to colonialism in both countries.

REFERENCES

→ Ramsay, Emma, 2015: ‘Red Dirt In Bondi: The Story of Building Bridges (3MDR, Melbourne)’

→ George, James Rimumutu, 2014: ‘Cuzzie Bros: the interface between Aboriginal people and Maori/Pacific Islander migrants to Australia’, PhD thesis University of Newcastle

→ Cook, Kevin and Goodall, Heather, 2013: Making Change Happen: Black & White activists talk to Kevin Cook about Aboriginal, Union & Liberation politics, (Aboriginal History & ANU ePress) 

→ Reed, Liz, 2006: “"...different lives in different places": A Space for Multiple White Identities through Aboriginal Rock Music". In Lynette Russell (ed.). Boundary writing: an exploration of race, culture, and gender binaries in contemporary Australia. (University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 0-8248-3048-2.)