Singer conquers Europe but 'wants to go home'

theage.com.au November 29, 2009

On his first tour of Europe but fast becoming the talk of the town, upcoming world music sensation Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu, the blind Aboriginal with the voice of an angel, "just wants to go home". "He hates travelling," said his friend, manager, producer and spokesman from Melbourne, Michael Hohnen. "He's happy and content sitting with his family on his island, eating stingray, singing songs, telling stories, just being social."

"Ever since we left Australia he just wants to go home," he told AFP this week. Though Gurrumul may hate showbiz, he pulled off something of a coup by performing a duo in Paris a few days ago with none other than Sting, which airs on television and the internet on December 16.

And his first album, just released in Europe after being a hit in Australia, has sold more than 250,000 copies - a more than respectable figure for the world music genre. But Hohnen says sales could soar if the media-shy star finally agreed to meet the press and talk on TV.

"During the actual gigs he's in his element as a musician and as a singer," said Hohnen, who met the 38-year-old singer-songwriter more than a decade ago on his Elcho Island home off the coast of remote Arnhem Land in northern Australia, where Gurrumul plays in a group called Saltwater Band.

"But he doesn't like being the centre of attention. It's taken me a long time to convince him he can be centre-stage." The reluctant star never gives interviews, singing about ancestry, country, spirits and land - mostly in the Yolngu dialect of the Gumatj clan - while Hohnen deals with the press and the practicalities.

"He doesn't see the point of interviews," Hohnen said. "And he doesn't see himself as a spokesman for his people."

From an ode to orange-footed scrub fowl or python ancestors to songs about sunsets and storm clouds and grief, Gurrumul cuts to the quick with a voice Britain's Independent hailed as "timeless, nostalgic and haunting".

AFP