WITITJ HEALING

Obituary  George Rrurrambu

Charismatic Aboriginal singer working for reconciliation with a rock-reggae sound   Garth Cartwright

Thursday 19 July 2007

        Bone cancer has killed George Rrurrambu at the age of 50, thus depriving Australia of one of its most charismatic Aboriginal citizens. He gained fame in his homeland - and a degree of international recognition - as a musician and frontman for the Warumpi Band, whose celebration of Aboriginal identity and socially conscious songs represented a breakthrough in what remains a racially conservative nation.

Rrurrambu identified himself with the Yolngu people of the Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory. The word yolngu literally means "person" in the local language. The name of the band derives from the honey-ant dreaming site near the Aboriginal settlement of Papunya, 260km west of Alice Springs, where the band originated in the early 1980s. Initially playing to local Aboriginal communities, outback sheep stations and isolated townships, they toured Australia's hottest, dustied and desolate regions, developing a loose, soulful rock-reggae-country sound.

The band wrote, recorded and released the first rock song in an Aboriginal language, Jailanguru Pakarnu (Out From Jail), in 1983. A year later, they released their debut album, Big Name No Blankets. Its cheap production values could not hide the band's original vision and lyrical eloquence. Good reviews and a degree of radio play followed. One song, Blackfella/Whitefella, with its lyrical refrain of "Black fella, white fella/ Yellow fella, any fella/ It doesn't matter what your colour/ As long as you are true fella", has become a classic of contemporary Australian music. In 1985 the band toured Australia, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu, and a year later released their Go Bush album, which contained My Island Home, a hymn to Ruruuambau's tribal land that would become an unofficial national anthem to many Aboriginals.

With his huge Afro hairstyle and energetic stage performance, Rrurrambu, who also introduced Aboriginal clap sticks into rock'n'roll, began to be compared to Mick Jagger and James Brown. But alongside success he struggled with alcoholism. He later admitted, "I started off singing ... with the alcohol in my hand. I was singing about 'When are you going to stop drinking?' but I was falling all over the place. I realised that I was cheating my own people, saying, 'You stop drinking so I can drink it myself.'"

The Warumpi Band folded in the late-1980s, although Rrurrambu continued to perform as a solo artist. In 1995 the band reformed, released the album Too Much Humbug - with a launch party in Alice Springs before a tour of Australia, Germany, France, Poland, Switzerland, Italy and Britain. Although now commanding a degree of international recognition, and viewed as pioneers in Australia (where they had inspired a new generation of Aboriginal musicians and artists), they again split up in 2000. Rrurrambu, now concentrating on performing reggae-flavoured original material (both solo and fronting Birdwave), embarked on a theatrical career with Nerrpu Dhawu Rrurrambuwuy (The Story of George Rrurrambu) and gave workshops and lectures on the traditional Yolngu way of life. For these he travelled internationally, sometimes upsetting western clients when he insisted on sticking with traditional lore. "I was speaking overseas," he recalled, "and this wealthy woman, she wanted to play the didgeridoo. That's all she wanted to do. I explained that she couldn't (only men can), and she got upset. I told her, 'I should be the one getting upset! It's our lore, you have to respect it.'"

Rrurrambu was active in promoting reconciliation and cross-cultural understanding between Australians. In later years, he returned largely to traditional life, attending funeral and circumcision ceremonies with his father, a Gumatj clan leader. He was a proponent of combining the technical experience of Europeans with the knowledge of the land of the Aboriginal people in order to build a future that engaged all Australians.

He retreated to Elcho island, the place that inspired My Island Home, last February when the cancer diagnosis was terminal. For cultural reasons, upon his death he became referred to as George Burarrwanga. His last album, Nerbu Message, concluded with the song Wake Up Australia, something Rrurrambu had spent his adult life striving for. He is survived by his wife Suzina McDonald, two sons and four daughters.

· George Rrurrambu, singer, songwriter, born 1957; died June 10 2007

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