Much is being said about the documentary, Searching for Sugar Man which has already picked up a PGA and Sundance Award and is considered a sweetheart darling who walk away with the Oscar on February 24th.
Swedish filmmaker Malik Bendjelloul filmed the story about how two diehard South African fans, Stephen Segerman, a former jeweler and journalist Craig Bartholomew Strydom joined forces to investigate how the singer “Rodriguez” really died. They were trying to confirm rumors that the American folk-political singer had killed himself on stage.
It’s been 40 years since Rodriguez’s album “Cold Fact” was released in South Africa and the songs became a healing balm to the people in opposition to their government’s oppression. Rodriguez’ music, lyrics were considered “protest songs.” “Sugar Man” was the first of the track and it proved to have the most powerful and lasting effect. The lore is that the album reached South Africa when a woman brought home a copy for her boyfriend.
In the early seventies, Sixto Rodriguez, a Detroit native born to Mexican immigrants recorded two albums that absolutely went no where in the U.S., and he disappeared from the music industry returning to his demolition and renovation work. What he didn’t know was that while living in a dilapidated house in Detroit, carrying refrigerators on his back, his recordings became popular in Australia and South Africa. In Cape Town, he was “bigger than the Stones,” according to those interviewed in the film. Rodriguez was a superstar in South Africa… unbeknown to him.
Today, Rodriguez is 70 and while he worked in the wake of Bob Dylan, his music has more depth and he is truly a “shadowy street poet” and politician whose music consists of three chords and all about truth. In my opinion, Rodriguez’s songs are more concrete and with so much more character.
Rodriguez is a political musician, caring about the underdog, the less fortune. A smart and educated man with a degree in Philosophy from Wayne State University, he stands with President Barack Obama and equates The Affordable Healthcare Act to the same controversy back when farmers were told their children had to go to school, which meant pulling them off the farm where they helped their parents with the heavy work. “It took time for this education concept to catch on, but it did eventually,” he said in an televised interview. “Everyone deserves to have decent healthcare, so it will catch on too.”
Even if Searching for Sugar Man is part truth and part myth, it makes no difference because it brought this man and his music to the forefront where it should be in America and not just South Africa.
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