Nominated by: GK
Music club: Wander to Wozza's
Playlist addition: Inner City Blues
I have the DVD of the film - Searching for Sugar Man. The basic idea is two South African super fans try to find out whether Rodriquez (who was a huge selling artist in SA) is alive and if so where he is.
The soundtrack to the film is what we're all about here though. Here's an interesting idea for you (Schrödinger's cat style) - If Rodriguez was placed in a sealed box with his fate tied to the existence of Bob Dylan - could he also be considered to exist?
That is - if Bob didn't exist - would we ever have known about the existence of Rodriguez and myriads of other singer-songwriters. It's a dilly of a pickled paradox.
I'm not sure where the appeal for South Africans came from. Maybe in a country pretty much isolated from the rest of the world, they never heard any of Dylan's albums (or Neil Young, or James Taylor, or Cat Stevens).
Rodriguez's music is interesting - of its time (1970 - 1971) certainly, and his poetic sensibilities can be a tad off-putting at times but somehow his sincerity saves the day. So, although he sounds derivative, he also ends up sounding uniquely Rodriguez. It's another bizarre paradox.
The soundtrack is a combo of his two official albums, plus an unreleased third album, so it doesn't sound particularly cohesive and the stray moments where he mentions faggots are best skipped over.
I tend to prefer the tracks from his 1970 debut - Cold Fact, even though it's not produced as well (another paradox).
Okay, back into that locked box for Sixto Rodriguez.
BTW - yes, he was alive and he was tracked down to his American home in Detroit. He passed away in 2023.
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