Michael Hohnen & Erkki Veltheim: 'Gurrumul’s Success Has Been A Positive Force In Many Ways'

Some music is of its time, forever tied to the tastes and fashions of the day. And some music is for all time. Whether it is now or 100 years from now, this kind of music touches our emotions and humanity. It can even change the way we look at the world.

The music of Gurrumul has that kind of timeless force. The blind Aboriginal singer and songwriter, born Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu, was from Elcho Island off the coast of North East Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory. He released three studio albums before his death in 2017, aged 46. 

Those albums, Gurrumul, Rrakala and The Gospel Album, all showed that musical power doesn’t necessarily need to come from big guitars and thunderous beats. The power in Gurrumul’s soft, tenor voice connects with people wherever they are, whatever their backgrounds, whatever languages they speak. It makes them stop and listen, and that’s quite a gift in a world where so many feel that life is going by in a rush.

Two of the people who knew Gurrumul best are his producer, Michael Hohnen, and Erkki Veltheim, who began working with Gurrumul as a violinist in his live band before taking on the role of orchestral arranger for the music on stage and in the studio. Both Hohnen and Veltheim feel a deep responsibility to honour their friend’s legacy and to keep finding ways to take his music to the world.

They achieved that with the extraordinary Djarimirri (Child Of The Rainbow) album, with sublime orchestral arrangements complementing the voice. Gurrumul was a musical explorer, not content to make the same record twice, and work on that album began in 2012 before its eventual release a year after his death.

A second posthumous album, Banbirrngu – The Orchestral Sessions, is released tomorrow. It takes a different approach to some of his best-loved songs and frames his voice with understated and atmospheric orchestral arrangements.

The music was produced by Hohnen, arranged by Veltheim, and recorded in Prague by the Prague Metropolitan Orchestra conducted by Jan Chalupecký. The result is an album with an elegaic feel, and it will reach many new listeners around the world with its release by the classical music powerhouse label Decca.

Hohnen says: “We did a live concert with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra 10 years ago trying out a bunch of different orchestral backings. Now we’ve had the chance to refine that, going back to some of the well-known and less well-known songs in the repertoire.

“The word ‘banbirrngu’ has a few different meanings, and one of those is the rainbow python, but it is essentially about the cycle of life; we all come from the ground and return to the ground.” There was a theme for the album to follow.

Gurrumul’s music has always been a kind of bridge from the Yolgnu people, from Elcho Island, from an ancient culture, sung in an Indigenous language yet something that could be understood by music lovers anywhere. 

Listeners at home and critics have often described Gurrumul’s music as having a healing, balm-like effect, perhaps because his songs feel so deeply connected to the natural world. His music has been used in kindergartens, schools, hospitals, and countless homes. Hohnen and Veltheim intended for this recording to enhance that meditative aspect without diluting the spirit of the original vocal performances.

In preparation for his arranging work, Veltheim listened to vocal-only mixes of the original recordings, which opened up new directions for his arrangements.

Veltheim says: “What has always struck me about Gurrumul’s voice is that it already sounds like a choir. There are very few voices that have that kind of quality to them, and I wanted to bring that out even more with the orchestra behind him.

“Having done orchestral music with him with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, we already knew that he loved that sound and that his voice suits orchestral arrangements. Gurrumul’s songs tend to be slow-moving, cyclical, with repetition, and as Westerners, we rarely understand the words, so for us, it is about melody and harmony. All of that combined makes his songs a counterpoint to the 30-second attention span of the social media world.

“We have seen before our eyes how it affects people when they listen to it. They feel that it comes from another time and that it creates another sense of time.”

Hearing the songs delivered in Yolgnu language also contributes to that feeling for the listener.

Veltheim says: “There is a correlation between these orchestral versions and classical arias, where people don’t understand the lyrics, but there is something in the pace and melody that grips them. It’s that intrinsic attraction to the human voice that holds the attention.”

The album’s first single was a new setting for one of the world’s best-loved hymns, Amazing Grace, which fans know from Gurrumul’s version sung with Paul Kelly on The Gospel Album.

Hohnen says: “Gurrumul was always looking to do different things, so I suggested he do an album for his mother and aunties who brought him up in the church. It wasn’t meant to be like a black American gospel album, more a Uniting Church, Presbyterian, Methodist take on gospel music.

“Amazing Grace was in his repertoire at the time. His version says a few things to me. It’s about salvation, including how he worked in the wider world to be this amazing grace for people.”

Other highlights on the album include a version of Baru that retains the Spanish classical guitar from the original and gives it a subtle, shimmering orchestral setting.

Veltheim says: “People often talk about the shimmering quality in Aboriginal painting. Gurrumul’s voice has that kind of quality too, and we wanted to go deep into that in some of the more ambient arrangements, using the orchestra like an organ or synthesiser.”

Hohnen and Mark Grose co-founded the Skinnyfish label in 1999 to showcase the music of Indigenous Australians and artists like Gurrumul. 

“Gurrumul has been the perfect messenger,” Hohnen says. “We have worked with many First Nations artists, and we have always wanted to find a way to bring that music to the mainstream here and overseas so people can take in all the deep and rich elements the music has to offer. There is negative activism and positive activism, and this is a creative, positive activism.”

The guiding philosophy behind Skinnyfish is to empower Indigenous Australians through their own creative and economic activity. Hohnen has been in close contact with remote communities in the north for three decades.

“In remote Australia, there is a lot of policy that has changed in the past 30 years, helping First Nations people get a start, like the Indigenous ranger programs. But the remote Australia that I see is still behind the eight ball. I have been in a number of remote communities lately, and I don’t feel there is much positivity or hope in those places at the moment.”

But Gurrumul’s breakthrough to international acclaim has certainly helped break down barriers for other Indigenous artists.

“I was in the indie rock world in the ’90s, and some bands would be really envious of other bands breaking through. When an Indigenous artist has success, other Indigenous artists just have that bit more hope of breaking through.

“Any society needs some heroes. There is definitely pride and ownership, so East Arnhem Land people can say, ‘That’s part of us.’ These concepts Gurrumul sang about belong to 10,000 Yolgnu people, and any of them can sit down with you and say, this is part of my story. Gurrumul’s success has been a positive force in so many ways.”

Banbirrngu – The Orchestral Sessions will be released on November 8 via Decca/Universal.