Whose riot? Collective memory of an iconic event in a local music scene

Theoretical framework: collective and mediated memory, iconic events and identity

The growing interdisciplinary field of memory studies considers memory as a social phenomenon, building on the concept of collective memory developed in the 1920s by sociologist Maurice Halbwachs (1992). Halbwachs argues that since individuals construct memories through interpersonal communication, individual memories are socially mediated by those groups to which the individual belongs, which in turn maintain continuity and cohesion through the mutually supportive recollections of members. Scholarly understandings of collective memory have expanded beyond such informal, everyday communication to encompass cultural memory, comprising objectivised culture such as texts, images and rituals, as well as institutional and ceremonial practices. Such cultural formations can make the meaning of a collective experience accessible across substantial spans of time, providing a group with self-awareness and supplying formative and normative impulses that reproduce group identity (Assmann and Czaplicka, 1995).

The relationship of collective memory to identity is part of what differentiates it from history, which aspires to provide an accurate account of the past while collective memory ‘inevitably involves some identity project – remembering in the service of constructing what kind of people we are – and hence is resistant to change even in the face of contradictory evidence’, though by the same token it may change to serve present needs (Wertsch and Roediger III, 2008: 320). The social origins and functions of memory make it a site of struggle, involving power relations between and within groups. The concept of counter-memory, informed by the work of Michel Foucault, refers to memory that challenges hegemonic narratives of the past in order to transform those narratives or to empower a group (Misztal, 2003: 64–6). For example, Harrison (2011) describes the ‘counter-mapping’ of alternate and minority social geographies as interventions in official heritage, such as a Black Heritage walking tour of the London district of Brixton which commemorates and contextualises a 1981 riot according to local community perspectives that contrast with broader public perceptions.

The media, which are typically presented and perceived as a platform for socio-cultural struggles, are also direct participants in the competitive processes of construction and selection that shape collective memory (Neiger et al., 2011a: 7). This participation is not limited to journalism but extends, for example, to popular music radio as a cultural mnemonic frame (Neiger et al., 2011b). The fragmentation of media audiences arguably increases the multiplicities of collective memory, as diverse media are used to reconstruct, contest and ‘mobilise’ collective memories (Lee and Chan, 2016). This is consistent with the broader notion of ‘parallel and overlapping public spheres’ (Forde et al., 2002: 57). Community radio has been theorised as a cultural resource involved in the construction of a ‘community public sphere’, which is the product of contestation with the mainstream public sphere and which ‘enables local communities of interest to deliberate together, to develop their own counter-discourses, and to interpret their own identities and experiences through dialogue’ (Forde et al., 2002: 57). Van Vuuren (2006) applies this model to 4ZZZ among other stations, while adding that their community building involves control, exclusion and the proprietary enclosure of the public sphere according to cultural values. We may therefore expect the community public sphere to be involved in the construction, contestation and mobilisation of collective memory.

Collective memory has been postulated and studied in various kinds of communities and social groups, including families, social classes, religious communities (Halbwachs, 1992), and political and social movements both at the national level (Conway, 2009) and concerning specific, local matters (Verberg and Davis, 2011). The concepts have recently been applied in relation to popular music culture (Bennett and Rogers, 2016; Strong, 2011). Bennett and Rogers (2016) call for greater attention to cultural memory in understanding music scenes, a concept used in academic research since the 1990s to designate the contexts in which clusters of producers, musicians and fans collectively share musical tastes and distinguish themselves from others. Their empirical work and similar studies internationally, such as Cohen (2012) in the United Kingdom, consider in particular the role of places and objects in the memory of music scenes.

In collective memory there is a key role for events that the group recognises as significant. According to Assmann and Czaplicka (1995: 129), the fixed points of cultural memory are ‘fateful events of the past’. Karl Mannheim’s influential theory of generations posits that they are constituted by the collective memory of historical and political events (Eyerman and Turner, 1998). Events may be iconic, compressing fields of myth and meaning into a portable cultural referent. For example, the music festival at Woodstock in 1969 is iconic of the 1960s counterculture for both sympathisers and critics (Smith, 2012). As this example demonstrates, iconic meaning does not arise from the bare facts of an event but through a process of mythologisation, assisted by media representations that privilege particular interpretations (Bennett, 2004; Smith, 2012). Armstrong and Crage (2006) identify a number of factors that make an event an effective commemorative vehicle, based on their analysis of how the ‘Stonewall riot’ became iconic for the gay liberation movement: commemorability, as found in a dramatic, politically relevant and newsworthy event; mnemonic capacity, referring to the skills and resources of the group; resonance, being a measure of how the commemorative form and content appeal to the intended audience; and institutionalisation, such as in the annual Stonewall parade. Events are not remembered as decontextualised fragments but are embedded within narratives that render them meaningful to the group and to the broader community, while stakeholders compete for narrative authority (Verberg and Davis, 2011). Historical figures and events provide models for interpreting and responding to traumatic events and crises in the present (West, 2008). Controversial events embedded within ‘difficult pasts’, such as war and political upheaval, can inspire competing narratives tied to group identities, for example as victims or perpetrators (Conway, 2009). The notion of competing narratives is relevant to this article’s consideration of how a clash between state authorities and a consciously alternative community is remembered.

Collective memory is also important for individual identity, as personal narratives are constructed in relation to group narratives and personal experiences are interpreted and remembered using shared frameworks. Eyerman (2004: 161) provides the metaphor of a ‘narrative frame’, which recognises that individuals experience and express belonging to a group by locating their personal narratives in relation to a collective story, which they are able to access over distance and time through various media. This is how modern media permit people to experience common heritage and share understandings, as Strong (2011) has shown in relation to fans of grunge music. Even quite private experiences are remembered using collective narrative forms, as shown in relation to music fans (Green, 2016). The corollary is that collective memory and the associated group identity are reproduced over time through these individual narratives in combination with cultural objects and forms.

Research methods: music, biography and history

This case study is based on data collected through in-depth interviews with people who attended Cybernana, in the course of a broader set of interviews with participants in the Brisbane music scene for a study of peak music experiences. Peak music experiences are those specific experiences with music that stand out from general experience and become part of an individual’s self-narrative, while reflecting and reproducing group criteria of truth and importance (Green, 2016). A total of 44 interviews were conducted, including five as a pilot study in 2012 and the remainder in 2015, with women and men between the ages of 23 and 58 who participated in Brisbane’s local indie, dance and hip hop music scenes by listening to and in many cases creating or otherwise facilitating music. The interviews were face-to-face and semi-structured, with open-ended funnelling questions following a biographical structure from the interviewee’s initial interest in music to their current practices. Interviews were recorded and transcribed and this research was carried out with prior ethical approval from Griffith University. The interview participants identified various encounters with music with personal significance, as well as shared experiences of collective significance such as the Cybernana event. The interview sample was representative of both those who attended the event and those who were able to provide important contextual information through their involvement with 4ZZZ and participation in the local music scene.

This article also draws from a range of secondary data sources, including various 4ZZZfm broadcasts, written publications and events, especially those associated with the 40th anniversary commemorations in 2015; news reports (Callinan and Woods, 1996; Giles, 1996; Hele, 1996) and long-form journalistic accounts of Cybernana (Birmingham, 1997); popular music history books (Stafford, 2004; Walker, 1996); documentary films (Ou, 2015; Wilson and Faulkner, 1988) and a multimedia exhibition hosted by the State Library of Queensland in 2012 (‘Live! Queensland Band Culture’). The collective narrative reproduced in these sources is considered in the next section.

Brisbane history: behind the Banana Curtain in Pig City

The Australian state of Queensland was governed by the conservative Country Party, later named the National Party, for over three decades from 1957 to 1989. Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen, the Premier of Queensland from 1968 to 1987, has come to symbolise this political era. Critics of the Bjelke-Petersen government note among other things that it restricted civil rights, such as banning all ‘street marches’ for several years in the 1970s, while sheltering corruption especially in the police force. It is claimed that the police were heavy-handed with the government’s critics, both through the undercover actions of the ‘Special Branch’ and in violent clashes at public demonstrations. Perceptions of political repression and an equivalent cultural backwardness are reflected in Queensland’s disparaging nickname, ‘the Deep North’, which draws an analogy with the so-called ‘Deep South’ of the United States (see for example Stafford, 2004: 10).

Queensland’s capital, Brisbane, was known by some as ‘Pig City’. This was the title of The Parameters’ 1984 single with lyrics describing police harassment of the local punk music scene. The same title was adopted for a popular book (reprinted twice to date) tracing the history of Brisbane music from the 1970s to the 1990s or, as the subtitle put it, ‘from the Saints to Savage Garden’ (Stafford, 2004). That and other cultural histories (Ou, 2015; Walker, 1996; Wilson and Faulkner, 1988; see also Bennett and Rogers, 2014; Rogers, 2008) depict the Brisbane music scene of the period in struggle against police intimidation and cultural suffocation, with both factors neatly embodied in the lampooned but feared image of undercover Special Branch officers wearing safari suits at punk concerts. This narrative was echoed by interview participants:

if you called yourself a punk in any way, and remember I never had a mohican [hairstyle] or a safety pin, you were gonna get vast amounts of police attention on your arse. And yeah, for a lot of young people who were interested in music and that style of music, it really became us and them. It polarised. (‘Ken’, 58)

Through this era, 4ZZZ was a hub of alternative politics and culture, consistently with the community public sphere theorised by Forde et al. (2002). ‘Triple Zed’ was founded in 1975 as the first FM radio station in Queensland, utilising public funding and listener subscriptions, produced largely by volunteers and catering to diverse local interest groups (see Anderson, 2017; Van Vuuren, 2006). 4ZZZ presents a grassroots political ethos encapsulated in its motto, ‘Educate, Agitate, Organise’. For decades, 4ZZZ has contributed significantly to the local music scene through the programming of substantial local music and organisation of scene-oriented events including the approximately annual Market Day festivals. The 25th anniversary of 4ZZZ was marked by a CD compilation of 41 songs by local artists spanning the station’s history, named Behind the Banana Curtain (Valve Records, 2000) in reference to both the station’s banana logo and the politico-cultural context satirised in local author Hugh Lunn’s 1980 book of the same name. The Parameters’ ‘Pig City’ single exemplifies the conjunction of music and politics at 4ZZZ, as the song was written by a station volunteer and recorded at the 4ZZZ studio (Stafford, 2004).

The Bjelke-Petersen era ended in the final years of the 1980s, after investigative reports published by The Courier-Mail newspaper and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Four Corners television program prompted an official inquiry into corruption. The Fitzgerald inquiry, so named for its presiding commissioner, led to criminal charges and convictions of the Queensland Police Commissioner and several Bjelke-Petersen government ministers as well as the resignation of the Premier himself, whose own criminal charges were the subject of a mistrial before he was judged too unwell for a retrial. In 1989, for the first time since the 1950s, Queensland elected a Labor government which implemented the reforms recommended by the Fitzgerald inquiry, including the abolition of the Special Branch and the establishment of the CJC to investigate police and public sector misconduct. This political change was celebrated in the music community, as noted in Stafford (2004).

Tam Patton [local musician]: I was at the Livid Festival in December 1989, and I remember the great cheer when [organiser Peter Walsh] walked onto the stage and said Wayne Goss was the new premier of Queensland, you know, that was a pretty powerful moment. (2004: 226)

Peter Walsh: […] The quote was, ‘No more fascism!’, which looking back on I’m very embarrassed about. But there was certainly that feeling in the air at the time. (2004: 180)

This political rejuvenation had a cultural counterpart for Queensland and its capital city, particularly in the music scene. Australian alternative music attracted increasing mainstream attention and by the middle of the decade a number of Brisbane bands were prominent in this boom; the local scene was strong and so was 4ZZZ after surviving financial difficulties (Stafford, 2004).

The 1996 state election returned the National Party to power, despite the controversial revelation that the party’s leadership had signed a memorandum of understanding with the Queensland Police Union in which they promised to wind back some of the Fitzgerald reforms. It was later that year that 4ZZZ staged the Cybernana Market Day festival, considered in the following section.

‘Anyone who tells you about it will tell you’: what happened at Cybernana?

Cybernana attracted over 8000 people to inner-city Musgrave Park. For participants in the research interviews, memories of the day include two things typical of other Market Days of the time: ‘tonnes of drugs’, especially ‘acid’ and alcohol, and the presence of ‘the tribes’, from skinheads and heavy metal fans to hippies and local ‘West End people’ creating what ‘Grant’ (49) recalled in an interview as a ‘massive melting pot’. These recollections agree with the leading journalistic accounts, an Australian Rolling Stone article (Birmingham, 1997) and a chapter of Pig City (Stafford, 2004). Birmingham notes that ‘[y]oung surfies mingled with indie kids, skaters, old hippies and ravers’ along with ‘plenty of families, kids in strollers and toddlers hanging out at the bouncy castle’ and ‘Murries [Aboriginal people from the region], who got in free, it being their land and all’ (1997: 39). ¹ Stafford balances similar descriptions with more ominous references to ‘endless cheap beer’ and the organisers’ anticipation of ‘the 16,000 legged lager monster’ (2004: 222).

The research data contain less detailed recollections of the live music on offer. ‘Penny’ (34), who was then 15, mostly remembered smoking cigarettes and drinking smuggled wine near the event boundary, with no specific memories of music. ‘Kelly’ (39) recalled details of her band’s performance at the event, while ‘Jason’ (44) thought his band had also played until recently, when he saw a poster on which the band’s name was conspicuously absent. The most likely explanation is that he performed at another Market Day, as many of the research participants had trouble distinguishing their memories of these regular events. Interviewees tended not to describe the events by their year (e.g. Market Day 1996) or proper name (e.g. Cybernana) but by a distinguishing feature: ‘the one in the carpark’, or in this case, ‘the riot’.

Nevertheless, there are aspects of Cybernana that all participants remembered in accounts that were both vivid and concise. While Jason was uncertain as to whether his band played, he showed no hesitation in recalling the personally and collectively important aspects of the day.

Anyone who tells you about it will tell you about the storm coming over and the big change in the atmosphere and the horses, the cops. I just remember some people started saying, way over on the other side of the venue there was some shit happening and everyone sort of looked out at the storm, ‘Errr …’. For some reason or other I had to leave and what I found out later is, all hell broke loose only about five minutes after I left and one of my good friends was seriously injured by a cop. Like, hospital. And I’d only been talking to him an hour beforehand.

The common narrative among the research participants is that when a heavy evening storm hit the festival and many attendees took cover beneath a marquee, a number of police moved in on horseback and on foot, performing crowd control manoeuvres with shields and truncheons, leading to a chaotic mêlée. The interviewees could not provide first-hand accounts of what precipitated the police surge and had only partial observations of what followed due to their locations in the crowd. None of the interviewees were among the 72 arrested (Stafford, 2004: 227) or the many injured, although several claimed that their friends were injured by police, including one seriously injured and hospitalised as per the quote above. Over the following day, attendees shared such stories in calls to 4ZZZ.

The Cybernana clash was reported in mainstream news outlets, with conflicting accounts from 4ZZZ and police representatives (Giles, 1996; Hele, 1996) accompanied by conflicting commentary from civil rights lawyers and police leadership (Callinan and Woods, 1996). More enduring reports are those authored by Birmingham (1997) in Rolling Stone and Stafford (2004) in Pig City, both of which are broadly sympathetic to 4ZZZ and the local music scene. Birmingham’s article entitled ‘It’s Raining Cops’ compiles eyewitness anecdotes of malicious police violence: ‘[a] cop drew level with her and let one go – a round house punch to her face which knocked her off her feet’ (1997: 38). In Pig City, Stafford juxtaposes such allegations with police accounts of unruly and aggressive crowd behaviour (‘the sudden hail of cans’, 2004: 225), while noting the arguments of some attendees that the police must have planned their attack.

The claims of 4ZZZ and over 30 individual attendees were formalised in complaints to the CJC: that the police abandoned prior arrangements with the organisers and altered their chain of command on the day of the event; that there was an unusually large and threatening police presence all day; that the police reinforcements, equipment and manoeuvres suggested planning; that the involvement of military police (whose presence was admitted but whose hands-on involvement was disputed) was inappropriate for a civilian event; that there were multiple instances of police inflicting unnecessary or malicious harm and refusing to identify themselves; and that the overall action was unreasonable and amounted to harassment of 4ZZZ. Unsurprisingly, there was some difference between this version of events and that of the police, who denied all allegations and insisted that they acted only in response to a riot, which had developed after their intervention in smaller brawls within the crowd. The CJC published its report over a year later in December 1997 (Criminal Justice Commission, 1997). No police officers were found guilty of misconduct (with the report noting that complainants had been unable to identify their specific, alleged assailants) and the broader allegation that the police service had unreasonably targeted the event was not substantiated. Most importantly, the CJC accepted the characterisation of the situation as a riot, providing legal justification for a wide range of police actions. Thus the CJC report, which can be seen as the official history of Cybernana, essentially confirms the police version of events. As noted earlier, mainstream media coverage ceased after this outcome was reported.

However, an alternative account or counter-memory of Cybernana holds continued significance in the collective memory of the 4ZZZ community and associated local music scene, contrasting with the official characterisation and the apparent lack of interest of the broader public and media. A commemorative CD produced by 4ZZZ in 1997, featuring music by artists from the Cybernana bill, asks on its front cover: ‘Whose riot … the people or the police?’ (4ZZZ, 1997). It remains common for scene participants to characterise the event not as an audience riot in keeping with the CJC report but as an overzealous police response or even a ‘police riot’, apparently motivated by the enmity of some police toward the station and music scene (examples are presented later). A Facebook post by 4ZZZ on 19 October 2015 presents this characterisation:

On this day in 1996 the Cybernana Market Day at Musgrave Park, was shut down by more than 60 police in riot gear, some on horses, as well as military police who ‘just happened to be in the neighbourhood’. 4ZZZ filed a formal complaint to the Criminal Justice Commission to investigate police brutality and harassment of the station – however no police were found to be negligent in their duty on that day. Over 50 people were arrested during the police riot, mostly for riotous behaviour. Many people were injured, including volunteers, and the event had a significant impact on many Zedders involved on the day.

A further post on 17 December 2015, the anniversary of the CJC report, reiterates the station’s original complaints:

In summary the CJC report did not recognise any improper actions by the police and it contained a list of stringent recommendations for future Market Days. However, 4ZZZ still stands by its claims that police used excessive force, had completely disregarded an agreement with 4ZZZ and that this was part of the ongoing harassment of 4ZZZ events.

This characterisation is endorsed in individual responses to the Facebook posts (including 178 ‘likes’, 52 ‘shares’ and 45 ‘comments’ on the first post, and 89 ‘likes’, 19 ‘shares’ and 23 ‘comments’ on the second). This is also the predominant characterisation among the research participants, as reflected in the following interview quotes:

When the police came in, storming the crowds, they were just taking cover. One of the guys [I was there with] got injured in the crush. My memories are talking about how the response was so over the top. It pissed down rain and people were running for cover but it was treated like a riot. (‘Penny’, 34)

The one I remember was a riot, or I would call it a police riot. […] I mean there was no need for it, no call for it. Yeah a bunch of young people are gonna get a bit rowdy and a bit stroppy but nah, it was just police misbehaving, out of control, and no one ever got called to account for it. […] They were just, they never liked Triple Zed, they never liked the Market Day, and I couldn’t tell you what the trigger was, but for some reason they just thought they could run riot. (‘Ken’, 58)

The purpose of this article is not to determine precisely what occurred at Cybernana or how it should be characterised legally or morally. Rather, this section has examined how and by whom the event is remembered and characterised. The broad lack of mainstream media attention since 1997 suggests the lack of a significant memory among the wider public. However, for the local music scene oriented around 4ZZZ, the event is collectively remembered through the maintenance of a counter-memory (‘police riot’) in defiance of official findings (‘audience riot’). As the 4ZZZ Facebook post observes some 19 years later, the event had a significant impact on many ‘Zedders’ who were involved. The following section of this article considers that impact, through analysis of the interview data.

‘Market Day affected everybody’: what does Cybernana mean?

In ascertaining the meaning of what took place at Cybernana, two main themes emerge from the research data: the event’s exemplary status for the local music scene of the 1990s, and the event’s relationship to the ‘Pig City’ narrative of local history. Regarding the first theme, Cybernana is associated with an idea of the Brisbane music scene in the 1990s as a vibrant, non-mainstream community that courted danger. Some who were present at the event make explicit comparisons with today’s youth music festival culture, which they perceive as less committed and authentic, as shown in the following quotes.

One of the things about Brisbane is that mixture of those early Triple Zed shows, danger and police and drugs and they were fun but you never knew what was gonna happen, when it would turn a bit weird. Yeah there were lots of very crazy gigs back then. Those festivals were very different to things like the Big Day Out or whatever, because the Big Day Out [a music festival that toured nationally from 1993 to 2014] attracts people who just wanna be a part of something ’cause all their friends are going, but Triple Zed was like a lifestyle thing, smaller crowds and people who were lifestyler punks and anarchists and people who wanted to see the music. (‘Kim’, 44)

You know it’s sort of pre- the Internet really taking off, so it was back in the really analogue sort of days. And it just really felt like quite a rebellious kinda day, an independent sort of day. Really it felt like a bit of a little patch of anarchy, you know what I mean. It felt a bit wild and crazy because it usually was […] And it’s become less and less and sort of, as alternative music’s sort of become really commercialised and bought out and all this stuff, all the kind of clothes that we used to wear even, you can now get ’em in Kmart and it’s kinda become shit. (Grant, 49)

These quotes suggest that Cybernana and other Market Day festivals of the early 1990s play a role in generational consciousness within the Brisbane music scene. However, for younger participants, Cybernana was remembered as a point of entry to the same scene. A number of interview participants referred to their teenage experiences of ‘all-ages’ events of the mid to late 1990s, including Market Days, as foundational moments for their interest in the scene and gateways to broader involvement. Cybernana, involving a collective experience of excitement and danger, and attracting an unusual level attention from outside the scene, carried a sense of initiation, as shown in the following quote:

It sticks in my head. I’ll think of that event almost every time I go past Musgrave Park. I did feel part of it, it was scary but I was part of it, to be able to go to school and say this thing happened. It took a few days, it was on the news, then it blew up maybe because of the inquiry. […] I think we were too young to make sense of the scene but it had this aura and allure to it, we wanted to be part of that alternate music scene, that was a big part of it. (Penny, 34)

Cybernana is remembered as exemplary of the kind of events associated with 4ZZZ and the local music scene in the 1990s and the culture that was expressed there. When remembering their experiences of Cybernana, the research participants invoke that broader setting, reproduce the collective idea of a vibrant and dangerous alternative scene and locate themselves in relation to it, for example as veterans or initiates. Each person’s memory of the event involves two complementary identity projects, expressing their personal identity as well as reaffirming the identity of the music scene to which they belong.

The element of alleged police brutality at Cybernana adds a further dimension to its significance, explicitly recalling an earlier, storied era of the local music scene. Accordingly, the second main theme arising from the research data is the situation of the event within Brisbane’s history as ‘Pig City’, in which fans of alternative music and 4ZZZ in the 1970s and 1980s existed in the shadow of police harassment. ‘Ken’ (58), the oldest interviewee and a former participant in Brisbane’s punk music scene, remembered the police actions at Cybernana as disturbing but consistent with his past experiences. For him, Cybernana confirmed that the police attitude toward 4ZZZ and the local music scene remained essentially as it was in the Bjelke-Petersen era, albeit less overt.

Whatever the trigger was, it was a grossly over-the-top and inappropriate response. But that’s always been the way. I mean, hell, I was at the Hamilton Hall one where the police turned up with the dogs and arrested a bunch of kids – ’cause no one was over their mid-twenties – [and] chased the rest of us down the street with the police dogs. Really?

Given the age range of those who attended Cybernana, not all attendees had such direct experience of the earlier era. Stafford (2004: 226) observes that ‘[m]ost of the younger members of the crowd had no experience of being caught in the middle of a major police action’. Birmingham (2013) has also alluded to this inexperience when reflecting on his investigation of the event as the subject of an online AMA (ask me anything) forum hosted by the Reddit website, recalling the ‘naivety’ of the ‘new Triple Zed kids’ who ‘seemed very surprised that an officer of the law would get up into the witness box and tell bald-faced lies about what had happened’. However, in the present research sample even those with no direct experience of the ‘Pig City’ era exhibited a strong consciousness of the way Cybernana recalled that history. Penny, who as noted previously was 15 at the time of the event, acknowledged her mother’s influence in this regard.

I remember going home and talking about it to mum. She was horrified because it reminded her of the Bjelke-Petersen days, no one really doing anything wrong except trying to get out of the rain. She said the boys involved should make a complaint, because there was some kind of inquiry.

Jason, who was an adult at the time but had moved to Brisbane after the Bjelke-Petersen era, also described that history as central to his understanding of Cybernana, albeit in terms of his surprise at its apparent return.

The 1996 Market Day. Where we briefly saw a very, very intense flash of the good old ‘eighties’ Brisbane, back again just for one night. […] For someone my age who arrived in Brisbane literally within a month of the government changing, and all of a sudden Brisbane opening up and we’ve got this opportunity to not be the ‘Deep North’ anymore, I was in the first wave of young people who were coming and being musicians and artists here in Brisbane without all that happening. I was very conscious of that at the time and still am. But we were kinda six years into that and in 1996 it was just like this almighty tap on the shoulder. So it was a massive deal. Massive deal.

Jason went on to describe Cybernana as a marker of progress and a demonstration of the resilience of the local music community.

It was almost like the police or whatever force created that kinda got caught out, because it’s like, ‘Hey, it’s not 1982 anymore. You can’t do this. You cannot do this.’ And it just kind of weirdly strengthened the resolve of everybody.

Thus within the local music scene, even people who did not experience the ‘Pig City’ era still share and draw upon the collective memory of that time. This inherited, mediated memory informs their understanding of places (Brisbane), times (the 1990s), events (Cybernana) and their own experiences. Accordingly, the collective memory of ‘Pig City’ acts as a mobile narrative frame (Eyerman, 2004) within which individuals can locate themselves and their biographies and thereby connect to the group. Scene-specific media representations, especially those produced by 4ZZZ, help to provide this narrative frame, including by mobilising the relevant collective memory at key times such as anniversaries. Cybernana is rendered meaningful by being embedded within that narrative and is, in turn, an iconic event that acts as a commemorative vehicle for the broader narrative.

The resulting significance of the event for the scene is expressed in the following, further quote from Jason, whose use of the second person pronoun suggests that he is referring to both individual and group identity.

It’s got a huge significance to me. A reminder of why you are an artist and why you’re in Brisbane and why you’re doing this and what has fed into you to cause you to be the way you are.

The construction of Cybernana as an iconic event and its significance for the local music scene and the individual participants can be understood using the theoretical concepts set out at the commencement of this article, as discussed in the following section.

Discussion: counter-memory of Cybernana as an iconic event

The accounts of Cybernana presented above demonstrate clearly the operation of collective memory. Even those interview participants who attended relied on other people when describing what occurred there, illustrating Halbwachs’s (1992) central point that individuals reconstruct memories through communication with others. Here, the collective aspects of remembering include the informal communication among friends, family and scene members that Halbwachs describes as everyday communication, for example in Penny’s memory of ‘talking about how the response was so over the top’, and Jason’s assertion about what ‘anyone who tells you about it will tell you’. Cybernana is also the subject of cultural memory as defined by Assmann and Czaplicka (1995), involving such objects as the commemorative CD, Rolling Stone article (Birmingham, 1997) and popular history book (Stafford, 2004), and the recent 4ZZZ commemorative programmes and social media posts. When the interview respondents reconstructed what took place among hundreds of people on an eventful night, including in some cases after they had left, they were necessarily as reliant on multiple sources of information as were the journalists and legal adjudicators, although their different memorial projects require different approaches to that information. Journalists seek to present a two-sided story and the CJC is obliged to weigh evidence according to legal standards of proof (although some complainants claim to have found errors in the report such as the conflation of witness names). In contrast, the collective memory of the local music scene and broader 4ZZZ community inevitably involves an identity project, in which remembering is in the service of constructing ‘what kind of people we are’ in light of the group’s needs from time to time (Wertsch and Roediger III, 2008: 320). They remember Cybernana in ways that directly contradict the CJC findings, while insisting on the event’s significance two decades after mainstream media ceased reporting it. These acts of remembering can be called counter-memory, as they challenge the dominant narrative of the past in order to transform it or at least to empower the group (Misztal, 2003: 64–6).

Cybernana’s significance for the local music scene depends on its being embedded within broader narratives which render the event meaningful, most importantly the ‘Pig City’ narrative described earlier. Within this broader narrative it is an iconic event (Smith, 2012), referring to a bundle of meanings relating to place, time and culture. Following Armstrong and Crage (2006), it can be seen that there are a number of factors involved in the construction of Cybernana as iconic. First, as a festival, Cybernana was a space for the expression and experience of group identity beyond the strictures of everyday life. A critical function of festivals is to allow a collective representation and celebration of socio-cultural identity (Bennett and Woodward, 2014). Thus Cybernana, like other Market Day festivals of the time, is remembered as exemplary of the cultural milieu. Second, Cybernana stands out from other such events by reason of the dramatic, newsworthy riot, regardless of who was responsible for it. This provides the quality of commemorability, as well as resonance, as the clash between police and concert attendees is an obvious echo of ‘Pig City’ for those in the know. This historical context is noted in the accounts of both Birmingham (1997) and Stafford (2004) which, in turn, contribute to the construction of Cybernana as meaningful and memorable. That Cybernana was organised by 4ZZZ contributes to the mnemonic capacity available to commemorate the event. This capacity has been exercised through the inclusion of 4ZZZ and local music scene voices in historical accounts mentioned above, as well as through such cultural products as the ‘Whose riot …’ CD compilation and the commemorative radio broadcasts and Facebook posts, which help to construct and mobilise collective memory. Accordingly, the memory of Cybernana is institutionalised within the local music scene, though it remains to be seen whether this will extend the significance of Cybernana beyond the memories of those who were involved at the time. There is a contrasting lack of commemoration in the wider media, suggesting that the collective memory only extends as far as the local music scene and 4ZZZ community. This is consistent with the understanding of community radio as a resource for a community public sphere (Forde et al., 2002) and demonstrates the importance of memory as an aspect of that sphere.

Cybernana plays a role in generational consciousness within the music scene, consistently with the central role of events in the theory of generations (Eyerman and Turner, 1998). Older participants expressly contrast the event with today’s music festivals, as evidence that the Brisbane music scene of the early 1990s was more exciting and authentic. Additionally, people old enough to link Cybernana to their experiences of police activity in the 1980s assume that younger people would lack understanding of those precedents. However, people who were new to the Brisbane music scene when they attended the festival, including younger people, show a strong awareness of how the day’s events recalled the ‘Pig City’ era. This demonstrates the mobility of the narrative frame provided by collective memory, which travels partly through media representations. Younger attendees remember Cybernana as an initiation through which they came to belong to the local music scene, once again showing awareness of its values and history. Through both the distinctions made by older people and the claims of younger people to belong, the collective memory of Cybernana contributes to the sense of a continuous scene, extending before and after the event and maintaining a unique, cohesive identity despite internal and contextual changes. This aspect of the case study therefore demonstrates the close link between collective memory and collective identity. At the individual level, by using and reproducing this collective memory, people rehearse their belonging to the scene and locate their biographies in relation to it.

Conclusion

This article offers a case study of collective memory in a local music scene, as reflected in the personal narratives of scene participants. Specifically, the example of Cybernana demonstrates how an event is constructed as iconic and acts as a vehicle for collective memory, commemorating meanings and narratives that are central to scene identity. This iconicity arises from the event’s commemorability and resonance as reproduced through everyday communication, mediated acts of remembering, and cultural objects and practices, utilising the mnemonic and institutional capabilities of the music scene including the community radio station, 4ZZZ. In this way, against official findings and mainstream indifference, the Brisbane music scene maintains a counter-memory of Cybernana that affirms shared values of alterity and resistance, emphasising continuity with the scene of the past. Within this collective memory there is room for different interpretations that reflect generational distinctions and individual trajectories.

These findings demonstrate how collective memory facilitates identity, continuity and change within a music scene, underlining and responding to the call to bring together the theoretical approaches of scenes and memory studies (Bennett and Rogers, 2016). In particular, the concept of collective memory as a narrative frame (Eyerman, 2004) enhances our understanding of scenes as spaces of collective participation and belonging, by recognising that people participate in and belong to a scene by locating their biographies within its narrative frame and interpreting their experiences accordingly. The narrative frame is both shaped and shared through media representations, including as an important aspect of the community public sphere facilitated in this case by 4ZZZ. The frame can be adopted by new arrivals, displayed to outsiders and set against opposing narratives. Thus collective memory binds and defines the music scene, not only reinforcing particular interpretations of past events but also providing a way of interpreting events as they occur and placing them within an overall narrative.