Gurrumul awarded posthumous NIMAs accolades

IT WAS a bittersweet celebration at the National Indigenous Music Awards, as the late Gurrumul Yunupingu took out the acclaimed Artist of the Year award

Scenes from the new Gurrumul movie

THE late Gurrumul Yunupingu has taken out the acclaimed Artist of the Year category at the National Indigenous Music Awards (NIMAs) in Darwin.

The Elcho Island musician, who passed away just over a year ago, was also awarded Album of the Year for his chart-topping posthumous release Child of the Rainbow as well as Song of the Year for the album’s title track Djarimirri.

Fellow Yolngu musician Baker Boy, who has been winning scores of awards since his meteoritic rise to fame, took out New Talent of the Yearand Film Clip of the Year.

Gurrumul’s long term friend and collaborator Michael Hohnen said the accolades were proof that his friend’s last work was all worth it.

READ MORE: GURRUMUL ALBUM TOPS CHART

“I think so highly of him even now, we will never be graced with an artist that has such a presence and such a skill and ability to connect with an audience in this honest and musical way,” he said.

“The greatest strength that we take from this is that the last six years of his life, which were hard but we worked on so many things including this final album, these awards that are coming out now in lots of ways show that it was all really worthwhile and that it is being acknowledged.”

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Mr Hohnen said he was surprised to receive Song of the Year, especially with a track styled from a combination of minimalist classical music and ancient indigenous culture.

“It’s amazing that the committee are able to judge this against contemporary songs and it has still come up with the accolade,” he said.

“I always think our job as musicians is to challenge and to find new ways to create and to communicate.

“I think with that final work, we’ve been able to do that.”

Mr Hohnen said Gurrumul’s family and friends would also be honoured by the NIMAs win.

“His family believe that they are part of him and he is part of them, so the award to all of us is a great tribute to him and everyone that supported him from when he was a little baby,” he said.

“It has been a year since he passed away so it is much easier to accept now.

“For this last album to be recognised like this, in many ways it is beyond him as a person and it represents so much about Yolngu culture and the strengths of what Aboriginal culture has to offer.”

As for the artist himself, Mr Hohnen said Gurrumul would be very happy with the night’s results.

“He didn’t speak about it much but the way he behaved around the time of the NIMAs showed me what he thought,” he said.

“He would always insist on his family coming in.

“It’s about recognition of his peers and sometimes the recognition among peers is the strongest personal recognition you can get as an artist or as a person.”

Other winners on the night were the B-Town Warriors for the Best Community Clip and Roger Knox, who was inducted into the NIMAs Hall of Fame.

Buku-waṯthunawuy Nininyᶇu Rom and the Kenbi Dancers were named as the joint winners of the NT Traditional Music Award.