His second album, Rrakala, followed in 2011, his third, The Gospel Album, in 2015. In April 2018, his posthumously released fourth studio album, Djarimirri (Child of the Rainbow) debuted at number one on the ARIA charts, won multiple ARIA awards, and the Australian Music Prize. Djarimirri sets ancient Yolngu chants, some more than 4000 years old, against an orchestral background.
Fans included Elton John and Sting, Peter Garrett and Paul Kelly; he performed before Queen Elizabeth II and former US president Barack Obama – who also included him on his playlist of 2011.
A documentary released in 2018 showed Gurrumul behind the scenes and revealed he was his own man and didn’t run to schedules set by the outside world. It also revealed the challenges of balancing his desire to live a traditional life at home on Elcho Island, off the coast of north-east Arnhem Land, alongside the pressures of being a high profile, internationally acclaimed artist. In 2017, just days after signing off on the documentary, he died aged 46, of organ failure relating to the hepatitis B he’d contracted in childhood.
He was shy and rarely spoke in interviews, preferring his close friend and longtime collaborator Michael Hohnen to do so for him.
His legacy lives on through the Gurrumul Yunupingu Foundation, established in 2013 to engage and support young Indigenous Australians, particularly in remote communities, through long-term community-devised and driven programs across the arts, sport, language and cultural knowledge. One program underway currently is the Children’s Songs project, which sees the Foundation collaborate with teachers, musicians and translators of six remote Indigenous communities in the Northern Territory to collect, translate and perform their children’s songs.
Jess Mauboy and Manuel Dhurrkay, former Saltwater Band singer and Gurrumul’s cousin, will perform at the induction ceremony at the NIMAs ceremony on Saturday.
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The artist’s legacy will also be honoured on Thursday when Buŋgul is performed with the Darwin Symphony Orchestra, as part of the Darwin Festival. The event will commemorate his life, culture and final work Djarimirri, which was the first album in an Indigenous language to chart at number one.
The news comes in a week that has seen a massive outpouring of love and respect for the great Archie Roach. Like Roach, Gurrumul helped open people’s hearts and minds to the depth of our First Nations culture and his work helped teach generations of Australians about Indigenous history, people and philosophy.
Previous inductees to the hall of fame include Gurrumul’s former band Yothu Yindi, the Warumpi Band, Tiddas, Kev Carmody, Ruby Hunter and the late Archie Roach.