Yunupingu dead at 46

Dr G Yunupingu: Australia's most prominent Indigenous musician dies aged 46

By the National Reporting Team's Jane Bardon

Updated 15 minutes ago

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VIDEO: Dr G Yunupingu: Australia's most prominent Indigenous musician dies aged 46 (ABC News)

Australia's most prominent Indigenous music artist Dr G Yunupingu has died aged 46 and is being mourned by family and friends as a "genius and wonderful human being".

The singer — from the remote community of Galiwin'ku on Elcho Island, 500 kilometres east of Darwin — shot to stardom in 2008, winning an ARIA Award for his namesake album.

The album hit triple platinum in Australia, silver in the UK and charted in multiple countries worldwide.

Son of the rainbow

If anyone every truly spoke through his music, it was the late Dr G Yunupingu. Look back at his enormous legacy.

Dr Yunupingu's record label Skinnyfish described him as "one of the most important figures in Australian music history, blind from birth and emerging from the remote Galiwin'ku community ... to sell over half a million copies of his albums across the world, singing in his native Yolngu language".

His friend Vaughan Williams told the ABC the artist had been staying in Darwin.

Mr Williams said he was contacted by people concerned that the singer — who had contracted Hepatitis B as a child, causing liver and kidney disease — had not recently accessed renal treatment.

He said he took the singer to Royal Darwin Hospital on Thursday, and was informed about the death on Tuesday afternoon.

Mr Williams had known the singer since he was 15.

"He was a shy, humble and wonderful young man, who turned out to have such a fantastic voice," he said.

"He was a musical genius who could do rock, gospel, soul. He could do it all."