Reclusive Gurrumul launches in the US

Meeting Stevie Wonder is one of the highlights of Gurrumul Yunupingu's musical career, but there may be more to come now his launch into the United States is signed, sealed and very nearly delivered.

The blind-from-birth Gumatj musician announced his plans on Wednesday to tackle the American market as his first solo album, the self-titled Gurrumul, is released there this week.

But any tours will have to be carefully planned, his longtime collaborator and spokesman Michael Hohnen says.

"If (talk show host) Jimmy Fallon's people rang, we'd be over there in a flash," he joked.

"But you can't tour Gurrumul around from scratch. He's not well enough to do that. He's got a complicated (diet-based) illness which is heart and liver and kidney ... It's really fragile so we're careful to not do that much with him."

The majority of Gurrumul's musical influences are American, Hohnen says, citing Neil Diamond, The Eagles, Bob Seger, Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson.

"Gurrumul's an addicted musician, that's his life; he loves American musicians, they're his idols in a way," he says.

The 44-year-old has certainly come a long way from Elcho Island off the Arnhem Land coast.

Since launching his album Gurrumul in 2008, accolades have rolled in from around the world. Sting called his voice "the sound of a higher being" while Rolling Stone magazine said he was "Australia's most important voice".

He has won a slew of awards and was the subject of an Archibald Prize-winning portrait by Guy Maestri in 2009, but has remained relatively protected from the more dangerous trappings of celebrity thanks to his unusual relationship with Hohnen, who sees himself as a window into Yolngu life.

"I don't mean to filter (for Gurrumul); I just think there would be no story if I didn't talk, and his family is really keen on me talking," he tells AAP.

"He's almost not his own person. He's part of that enmeshed social and cultural body that exists out there ... They're so proud of how he's presented because it's ultimately how they're presented as well."

Gurrumul's stature in the community has remained relatively unchanged since his solo career took off, Hohnen says.

"They don't really see him as world famous. He still lives in a house with 10 to 15 other people, with family. ... his uncle says, 'We are encouraging him to share Yolngu culture with the world', and whilst he's doing that, it's like he's fulfilling his role."

Hohnen says an apprenticeship of sorts performing with Yothu Yindi in the 1980s and '90s taught Gurrumul about the pitfalls of celebrity.

"Watching an Australian supergroup touring for years, in nightclubs playing remixes and watching the press that followed and how much they had to do to expose themselves ... Gurrumul decided, 'I can't be a part of that, it's not who I am, it's not my role, I'm blind, therefore I don't see the world in a way other people do and I can't speak for them'," Hohnen says.

But his music has spoken to audiences the world over, attracted by something primal in its depth of yearning for meaning and connection.

"The content is in language, and what he's singing about is culturally quite heavy," Hohnen says.

"Maybe in 50 years people will be studying the cultural content he sings about now, because it's as fascinating as Greek history and many other classic texts, but he has this veneer of it being beautiful, acoustic, natural, popular music."

Most of his songs are about the connection to land, Hohnen says.

"The Yolngu see themselves as not just people (but) as part of the natural make-up of the world. It's like going outside of their body to be able to talk about who they are because they have to talk about how they relate to places, to ancestors, to animals, to elements, to the wind ... it's all connected, and there's so much vocabulary there in Yolngu Matha that doesn't have translation."

Hohnen says the sentiment audiences have connected with so strongly is the desire never to lose touch with their place in the world.

"A lot of people want that connection and never find it," he says.

• Gurrumul will premiere material from his third album on August 17 in Darwin, with Queensland's Chamber Orchestra Camerata of St John's. American tour dates to be announced.