As a small boy Gurrumul was not only influenced by the traditional music of his clan but by the gospel music he heard every Sunday at the local Methodist church. The Gurrumul The Gospel Album is a re-imagining of the spiritual songs that came to north east Arnhemland via Christian missionaries.
In a musical setting that will be familiar to fans of Gurrumul, you will discover a uniquely Indigenous approach to gospel songs but with an expanded sound that combines new hymns, and reimagined gospel songs of his Elcho Island community.
The inspiration for this album came from us wanting to create a dedication to Gurrumul’s mother and aunties, who brought Gurrumul up with songs and lullabies from the church at Elcho Island. This is a very big thank you to the beautiful extended families, and is inspired by that upbringing.
With Gurrumul’s own characteristic, special and unusual vocal grace we have taken these old (and new) songs and tried to embed them into the history of the old Methodist church on the hill in the middle of the Galiwin’ku community. We have tried to produce soulful and seductive meditations and hymns to add to Gurrumul’s body of work for all to enjoy, and experience and provide a different window into his culture.
Each song was presented to us by Gurrumul as a sketch in a traditional remote NT church gospel style, and we played with feels, styles, genres and arrangements to produce something that hopefully stands alone as a Gurrumul album in its own inimitable way.
The process we took for the making of this album was very organic. We worked with Gurrumul for a little pre production of any Gospel songs that he knew or remembered. He produced a couple including Riyala, and Baptism straight away and that was enough inspiration for us to set a date to record. We entered the studios not knowing what would come out, but we did know that inside Gurrumul’s mind and memory was a body of work that he had never been revealed before to mainstream audiences.
The studio sessions were musical, improvisational and pure in their exploration of creating music, rather than recording in a predetermined way, outcomes were unknown until we recorded them.
Gurrumul’s life is music and in the studio he feels at home, inspired and energetic. He loves quality and loves personal and musical feedback. Song by song we (Ben Hauptmann, Tony Floyd, Robin Mai, Erkki Veltheim and myself) compiled a mini songbook of Yolngu Gospel songs with different styles and feels that we are now releasing as an album.