There’s something preternaturally soothing about the voice of Gurrumul, an Australian aboriginal singer and songwriter who made his United States debut on Wednesday night at SubCulture. It seems to arrive from a distance, high and serene, with a hint of reediness and a humble quaver, proffering melodies like lullabies.
Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu was born blind and grew up in an indigenous culture with a rich oral history on Elcho Island off the north coast of Australia. Nearly all of his songs are in his native language, Yolngu, and they often refer to traditional lore and to relationships with family and nature; “Djilawurr,” a song about a tropical bird, rose to a final falsetto birdcall. Gurrumul has been reworking his heritage for the wider world since the 1990s, when he was a musician in the aboriginal-rock band Yothu Yindi. The release of his solo debut album, “Gurrumul,” in 2008, made him a major star in Australia: performing in concert halls, appearing with orchestras, singing for heads of state, getting remixed. His music is as approachable as it is otherworldly.
It’s gentle folk-rock that was played at SubCulture by Gurrumul on acoustic guitar with a three-man band. The chords and tunings were Western, and the tunes were straightforward and symmetrical. Gurrumul, who plays his guitar left-handed and upside-down, and the guitarist Ben Hauptmann picked intertwined parts over Tony Floyd’s restrained drumming and Michael Hohnen’s string bass. Gurrumul barely spoke onstage; Mr. Hohnen, who’s also the band’s producer, said that Gurrumul is shy and speaks little English. So Mr. Hohnen introduced the songs with brief explanations. That left Gurrumul to perform as a purely musical figure, almost meditative, sitting in stillness but for his fingers and mouth and crooning in a language few of the listeners understood, but giving every melody an inner glow.
Along with his aboriginal legacy, another influence on Gurrumul is clearly the hymns of a missionary church on the island. Mr. Hohnen announced that the band’s next album, which it has been working on in New York City, is a gospel album, and Gurrumul sang one Christian song with deep reverence. A country lilt slipped into some of the band’s (slightly) faster songs, while a song that Mr. Hohnen said was based on an aboriginal dance inspired by cats turned out, disappointingly, to settle into reggae. But the band’s newest material — scheduled for an album a few years from now, Mr. Hohnen said — hinted at expanding ambitions. It was a song about a crow (with audience participation encouraged) that created a mesh of echoing guitar patterns and a stop-start beat behind a rougher, less westernized melody — a more adventurous way to bring aboriginal music into the 21st century.
- http://bit.ly/1GKMu89
Niciun comentariu:
Trimiteți un comentariu