In February’s Academy Awards, the 2012 low-budget film “Searching for Sugar Man” came out of the woodwork to capture the best documentary award.
Perhaps just as amazing as this film-which at some points was shot on an IPhone to save money-is the mysterious and miraculous story it tells of the search for a (not so) forgotten musician, who achieved very little in the United States but never knew the difference he made across the world before his disappearance from the public and rumored suicide.
It all started in Detroit, in the late sixties. Local bars and small concert halls were treated to the revolutionary music from a mysterious Latino artist. Nobody knew who he was, or knew anything about him for that matter. But he was extremely talented.
He went by Rodriguez-the name he would later use on the cover of his two albums. Two albums that hardly sold a copy, and could not bring Rodriguez enough money to stop working hard labor jobs for most of his life.
“I thought he was- and I mean this with respect- not much more than a homeless person,” said Don Dimaggio, a bartender at a Detroit bar Rodriguez would frequent.
So why care? He was a talented artist, but nobody knew him. Nobody cared. Why make a movie about him?
Nobody in America cared. The people of South Africa, on the other hand, did. Nobody knows how his first album, “Cold Fact” came to South Africa. It is rumored a girl visiting her boyfriend brought a copy over with her, and the music was infectious.
It is also unknown how it spread and sold so many copies in South Africa. Piracy, bootlegging-whatever it was-Rodriguez never saw a penny from it. He had no idea the effect he had in that country. He had no idea his music inspired a country separated by apartheid to understand the power of protesting a government. He had no idea, a whole world away, he was famous.
“Cold Fact gave people permission to speak their mind and start thinking,” said Steve “Sugar Man” Segerman, an inspired fan who was a big part of the search for Rodriguez.
Rodriguez also had no idea everyone thought he was dead.
It was rumored, and believed by most, that Rodriguez committed suicide in front of a live audience. Some say he lit himself on fire because he was booed when the concert did not go as planned. Some said he pulled out a gun and shot himself on stage. Neither story proved true.
In the nineties, Segerman and another South African fan named Craig Bartholomew Strydom set out to find out what happened to Rodriguez. They made phone calls, tried to find out where his money went, and used his song lyrics to try to gain locations at which they could start to search. They came up empty.
The people who answered the phones-if they answered at all-were vague. They did not get a lead in any of the places mentioned in his songs. Even the owner of the defunct record label that signed Rodriguez for his two albums did not know anything about what happened to him. It also did not help that they did not even know his first name. Many times he just went by Rodriguez, but was also known to be called Sixto Rodriguez, Rod Riguez, Jesus Rodriguez and the Sixth Prince. It was a dead end.
Then Segerman stumbled across Rodriguez’s old producer, Mike Theodore. They found him through one of Rodriguez’s songs, in which he talks about meeting a girl in Dearborn. That led them to the town near Detroit, right to Theodore, who told them the most shocking news they would probably ever hear.
Rodriguez was not dead.
“I was looking for a dead man, and I found a living man,” Segerman said.
His real name was in fact Sixto Rodriguez. He lived in the suburbs of Detroit and worked in demolition, which he had been doing since being dropped by Sussex records back in the early seventies.
They reached another breakthrough weeks later, when the two fans turned detectives got a response on a website they had dedicated to the hunt to find Rodriguez. It was from his daughter, Eva, who confirmed he was alive and left a phone number for Segerman and Strydom to reach her.
It was Segerman who called. They talked on the phone, and she later asked if he wanted to talk to Rodriguez himself.
“It was 1 a.m. and the phone rang,” Segerman said. “My wife picked up the phone and she had this look of awe on her face.”
It was Rodriguez.
They would later meet the man for whom they had spent so long looking, and informed him of how famous he was in South Africa, which he and his family had trouble believing. Rodriguez agreed to go to South Africa and put on a concert. His daughters were hoping that there would be at least twenty people in the stands for it. Try 20,000.
When Rodriguez and his family stepped off the tarmac in Cape Town, they were greeted by screaming fans and paparazzi. This was somebody who was a hero to many people, and who was believed to be dead. It was like a hero coming back to life.
Rodriguez put on six concerts during his trip to South Africa in March of 1998. The 20,000 seat arena was sold out for every single one. This poor demolition worker who gave up on his musical career long ago was a rock star.
“The whole thing was so sweet,” Rodriguez said in the documentary. “I didn’t believe it and I still don’t. South Africa made me feel like more than a Prince.”
It was not professional detectives or reporters who found Rodriguez. It was two dedicated fans: two fans representing an entire nation yearning to learn what became of their hero. Through their persistence, and later the direction of Malik Bendjelloul for the “Searching for Sugarman” documentary, Sixto Rodriguez is a star. It may be several decades later than it should have been, but he is finally getting the recognition for his contributions to music and society that he so greatly deserved.
Kenny Ayres is a third-year student majoring in communication studies with a journalism minor. He can be reached at KA739433@wcupa.edu.