Searching for Sugar Man Review

Searching for Sugar Man was a shot in the dark find in my local charity shop. The documentary begins with a shot of the South African coast to a song called “Sugar Man” a lavish seventies sounding song I never heard before. This was the work of songwriter Sixto Rodriguez. After recording only two albums he dropped off the radar altogether. Many people through urban legends summarised he killed himself during a concert in the seventies, they are different accounts of this from setting himself on fire to using a gun, this gave him a Robert Johnson level of mystery around him. In America he was virtually unknown. In Cape Town, South Africa is where the story really begins. Rodriguez’s first two albums ended up there by unknown means and was widely bootlegged due to its popularity with South Africa’s youth. Rodriguez became a rebel and icon to South African youth who saw him as a light in the highly conservative country during internationally condemned apartheid, his music was inspiring countless South African protest singers. When some hard-core Rodriguez fans followed the money to find answers, they hit a dead wall of hostility during an interview. It is subtlety touched upon in the documentary, that a prominent person in the record company might have cheated Rodriguez and other artists out of their royalties; the matter to this day is still under investigation. It wasn’t until the nineties, people found out what happened to him.  He stepped away from music and did construction work in Detroit and lived a very humble simple life. He eventually got a chance to perform in South Africa on March 6^th 1998 for thousands of fans. You can see in the video footage that the audience is in awe of him. They were just so glad to see Rodriguez, the man in the flesh and that he wasn’t a myth; he was real. Rodriguez was the picture of serenity in this screaming chaos, he just felt so comfortable on stage like it was an old friend he hadn’t seen in a while. Searching for Sugar Man is an excellent portrait of Rodriguez as a humble, talented socially conscious man who did want to improve things; he actually ran for public office in 1989, mayor of Detroit in 1981 and 1993. They did leave out the fact he was popular in other countries like Australia, Botswana and New Zealand. But I think this was due to the fact apartheid South Africa had very little access to information on the outside world. Sixto Rodriguez, an artist without the shackles of wealth, vanity, and fame. Searching for Sugar Man is a great introduction to his music and Rodriguez.

Stuart Ritchie