SYDNEY (AP) — A blind Aboriginal musician renowned for singing in his native Yolngu language with a heart-rending voice and a unique guitar-playing style has died in Australia. He was 46.

Darwin-based Skinnyfish Music says in a statement their artist Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu, whose is now referred to by local media as Dr. G. Yunupingu because of cultural sensitivities among northern Australian Aborigines around naming the dead, died Tuesday after a long illness in a Darwin Hospital.

Skinnyfish says Yunupingu is remembered as one of the most important figures in Australian music history, blind from birth and emerging from the remote Galiwin'ku community on Elcho Island off the coast of Arnhem Land to sell over half a million copies of his albums across the world.