Gurrumul

8.     Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu. This album is the result of an inspired collaboration between Michael Hohnen, Eekki Veltheim and Dr G. Yunupingu. The discoveries of contemporary minimalism are used to support, drive, and colour traditional manikay of Yolngu music of north east Arnhem Land. The more I listen to this particular album the more I am made aware of how the spoken voice of any locality forms and informs the singing voice, and so the composition of music itself. There is inspiration, imitation, improvisation, and so the whole play of voice and sound continues through time. The composers have listened attentively to the tone and inflection, the rhythm and style of Gurrumul’s lyrical singing before setting to with the instrumentation. They are creation songs, singing up the world of crow, scrubfowl, tuna, octopus, and crocodile, and everything that gives them and us life: air, light, fresh water. My mother never gives music CDs as presents, we’re likely to have them already, but she gave each of us each a copy of this album for Christmas.

The CD is pictured on a two-page detail illustration of a work called ‘Distant glimpses of the great floodplain seen through a veil of trees and hanging vines’ by John Wolseley, in the magnificent book ‘Midawarr Harvest : the art of Mulkun Wirrpanda and John Wolseley’  (National Museum of Australia, 2018)