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If anyone every truly spoke through his music, it was the late Dr G Yunupingu.
When I first heard his voice I was startled by it.
I was at my desk listening to a bunch of live recordings from the 2006 Darwin Festival. I listened intently as the late Dr G Yunupingu gave only his second solo performance, an acoustic set.
I listened over and over — I couldn't get this strange, beautiful voice out of my head.
At 36, this relatively young man with three distinctive names had spent much of his life playing in the background of his family band, Yothu Yindi, led by his close relative — a senior member of his Gumatj clan from north-east Arnhem Land.
On that live recording, in among the songs in his Yolngu Matha language about epic journeys, totemic beings and reverberant songlines, he told one incredible story in English: his own.
"I was born blind, and I don't know why."
Blind from birth, Dr G Yunupingu conveyed everything you needed to know about him in his songs. The lilt of his voice, fragile but deeply resonant, seemed to reach into the sky for an answer.
Dr G's blindness may have deepened his musical abilities.
"Being a musician is about hearing, and when you are blind you're listening more than normal to everything around you," says Anna Reid, the dean of the University of Sydney's Conservatorium of Music.
"Because your heightened sense is your hearing sense, you're able to merge sounds in quite a different way because you're so in tune with what's happening around you.
"Certainly his music is like that. In each of his songs he brings a music that is quite ethereal, textured, and therefore has this depth that's quite unusual."
An unconventional artist
Just as his kinswoman, the celebrated artist Nyapanyapa Yunupingu, unconventionally paints her own story in her wildly original style, so did Dr G with music.
A self-taught multi-instrumentalist from Galiwin'ku on Elcho Island just off the Arnhem Land coast, Dr G played the guitar upside down — with his left hand. Dr G had no use for picks, he simply kept his fingernails long.
Around the time he released his debut album in early 2008, I invited him to sing in our studios here in Sydney. After we recorded a short acoustic two-track set, with only one accompaniment — a double bass — I was confronted with a rare problem.
Dr G, I was told, did not want to speak. His collaborator Michael Hohnen would do the talking instead.
It was strange talking about Dr G and having someone else reply for him while he was sitting across the desk, directly in my line of sight, so close I could hear him breathe.
I kept hoping he would interrupt, break his silence — which I have to say at that time was not enigmatic, but slightly confusing.
During that strange interview, Dr G barely moved. There was no body language at all, and no sign that he was even listening, although I'm certain he was.
Dr G maintained radio silence for years. It was a gamble to release a full-length album sung almost entirely in an Aboriginal language in 2008.
But pretty quickly, the power of Dr G's music — his talent as a composer, his idiosyncratic playing and his high tenor voice — cut through.
Described by respected music critic Bruce Elder as "the greatest voice this continent has ever recorded", Dr G's debut went triple platinum and came in at number 30 in the Sydney Morning Herald's list of the top 100 Australian albums of all time.
He went on to release two more studio albums, Rrakala and The Gospel Album, and a live concert album in 2013.
Tributes flow around Australia
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has described Dr G as a remarkable Australian, who shared Yolngu language with the world.
Opposition Leader Bill Shorten tweeted that the blind musician "helped Australians see the wonder of the world's oldest living culture".
Labor Senator Malarndirri McCarthy says that through his music, Dr G leaves a great legacy.
His death plunges his family, community and many outside the Yolngu kinship system into mourning.
Out of respect, there is a prohibition on the speaking of his name and the use of his image — but significantly, not his music.
A fitting salute to a beautiful voice
On his official Facebook page, there is one particularly moving tribute from a woman whose partner, also receiving treatment for kidney disease, had been sharing a room with Dr G in the renal unit of the Royal Darwin Hospital.
She says that her partner became distressed during recent treatment, and then "all of a sudden" Dr G began singing from the next bed.
"Such a beautiful, calming, spiritual voice that man had."
When Dr G performed with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra in 2013, his relative Susan Dhanggal Gurriwiwi introduced one of Dr G's best-loved songs, Djarrimirri.
"He's singing about himself, how he was brought to the world and he's covered with rainbow," she said.
"Djarri is a rainbow. He is presenting that message to the world — telling the world that he is yothu djarrimir: 'I am a rainbow child, and I am covered with rainbow.'"
Topics: indigenous-aboriginal-and-torres-strait-islander, aboriginal-language, community-and-society, indigenous-music, music, arts-and-entertainment, galiwinku-0822
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