Matt Cunningham reflects on the power of Geoffrey “Gurrumul” Yunupingu

I can’t think of a better antidote for these chaotic, digitally disrupted times, than to sit down and listen to a Gurrumul album from start to finish, writes Matt Cunningham.

There are moments in time where people remember exactly where they were.

When man landed on the moon. When Princess Diana died. When the planes flew into the twin towers.

I can tell you exactly what I was doing on August 31, 2007.

I was sitting on the hill at the Gardens Amphitheatre, hearing for the first time the voice of Geoffrey “Gurrumul” Yunupingu.

It was a sound that sent a stunned silence over the audience, who had come to see John Butler, but left with vivid memories of his support act.

Gurrumul was born blind on Elcho Island.

He taught himself to play a toy piano and later the guitar, a right-handed instrument that he played left-handed and upside down.

And he had a voice that would literally move people to tears.

He had performed with Yothu Yindi and the Saltwater Band but it was his solo career that would see him rise to international stardom.

That concert at the Gardens Amphitheatre was one of his early mainstream solo performances. A year later Gurrumul would release his first, self-titled solo album, produced with his friend and long-time collaborator Michael Hohnen.

The Gondwana Indigenous Children's Choir rehearsing with Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu.

There were no bells and whistles, just a double bass, an upside down acoustic guitar, and the voice of an angel recorded mostly in Yolngu-Matha.

“I wanted to work with him to get into people’s lounge-rooms, so all we wanted to make was a beautiful sound where people didn’t make a biased call of ‘I don’t like this, something that’s not in English’ we just wanted to make something that’s really beautiful,” Hohnen says.

The album would go triple platinum, making it not just into lounge-rooms but also into hospital maternity wards and childcare centres where Gurrumul’s voice was said to have a calming effect on babies and toddlers.

It’s amazing how quickly the world can change.

Today, those toddlers are teenagers, growing up in a world dominated by social media.

A world where people’s attention spans have become so limited they now rarely sit down and listen to an album from start to finish.

Where politics has become so polarised people from Texas to the Territory are being driven further apart.

Gurrumul died in 2017. But the man who so successfully blended his ancient stories with western culture might have seen what was coming.

“United we stand, divided we fall,” he sang in the song he wrote about his own journey through life.

Last Friday, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, after meeting with national cabinet, announced a ban on social media for children under 16.

This happened to be the same day a new posthumous album of Gurrumul’s work was released. Banbirrngu - The Orchestral Sessions was recorded with the Prague Metropolitan Orchestra. Hohnen says he hopes it will bring Gurrumul’s work to a new audience, including those teenagers who might have had his music played to them as babies and toddlers.

“We’re now in a TikTok generation where attention lasts three seconds or five seconds or 10 seconds and this is like the antithesis of that,” he says.

I’m not sure if the Prime Minister’s well-intentioned social media ban will make any difference.

But I can’t think of a better antidote for these chaotic, digitally disrupted times, than to sit down and listen to a Gurrumul album from start to finish.

It’s a voice that, once heard, you will never forget.

Originally published as Matt Cunningham reflects on the power of Geoffrey “Gurrumul” Yunupingu