Unable to boot kernel image built for vexpress-a9 on qemu : Blank Screen

I have compiled linux kernel v4.9 using the following steps :

export ARCH=arm
export CROSS_COMPILE=arm-linux-gnueabi-
make vexpress_defconfig
make all -j40

Then I created ramdisk with a simple hello world program as init process

#include <stdio.h> 

void main() {
  printf("Hello World!\n");
  while(1);
}

//compile and pack
arm-linux-gnueabi-gcc -static init.c -o init
echo init|cpio -o --format=newc > initramfs

Now when I try to run with qemu, I get a black screen and nothing else

qemu-system-arm -M vexpress-a9 -kernel linux-4.9/arch/arm/boot/zImage -initrd initramfs -append "console=tty1"

Also, on my terminal from which qemu was launched, I get the following prints (which look irrelevant)

pulseaudio: set_sink_input_volume() failed
pulseaudio: Reason: Invalid argument
pulseaudio: set_sink_input_mute() failed
pulseaudio: Reason: Invalid argument

This is my qemu screen (completely blank) :

I am using Qemu for the first time and was using this article for reference.