Searching for Sugar Man

 This is a music biography with a bit of a difference. Normally when we settle down to watch one of these we know in advance what the artist's music is like. Even if we are not committed fans we usually at least know something. In this documentary this will simply not be the case for the vast majority of folks who decide to watch it. For this reason, Searching for Sugar Man is somewhat unusual.
Its subject, the singer-songwriter Sixto Rodriguez, recorded a couple of critically praised but commercially disastrous albums in the early 70's. He was quickly dropped by his record label and then basically vanished from the public eye for over quarter of a century. Rumours of his on-stage suicide circulated as fact. Where the story becomes a little unexpected is that through word of mouth he became massive in South Africa of all places. In the apartheid years his music developed a following that rivalled bands like the Rolling Stones. His lyrics hit a note with white liberals there and his albums became anti-establishment classics. Many of the people who would make important contributions to overturning the apartheid regime were influenced by Rodriguez. But the thing is, he knew absolutely nothing of his fame and popularity there. He received no royalties at all for the 500,000 albums he sold in South Africa. When interviewed, his label boss Clarence Avant gets a little shifty when asked about this. It seems that Rodriguez had been dealt a somewhat bum hand.
The second act of the story began when one of the South Africans who loved him discovered when speaking to an American friend that Rodriguez albums were impossible to buy in the States. This was something of a revelation, as up until this point it was generally assumed that he must have been a peer of Bob Dylan and just as popular. This led to a quest to discover more about the man; it led to the incredible discovery that he was still alive and living a modest life in Detroit with his daughters. The man himself was utterly unaware of his cultural impact in South Africa. The South African's subsequently organised concerts back home and so Rodriguez went there in the late 90's. A nobody at home, there he played to crowds of tens of thousands of people of all ages in the spectrum. They all seemed to know his records off by heart too. It was a revelation to witness this strange but uplifting story arc.
It's difficult to really know why Rodriguez never made it at the time. Many now classic acts such as Nick Drake never made it during their recording careers either. Sometimes a combination of things just conspires against a musician and Rodriguez seems to have been a victim of this circumstance. His music certainly is good - and there are nice animated segments to go along with some of his songs here – but it's difficult to say how good on one viewing. Certainly there were a lot of singer-songwriters in the early 70's on the back of Dylan. But what makes this documentary so interesting is not just the discovery of something hidden and good but also the realisation that a mass cultural happening could occur on another side of the world without it's figurehead knowing the slightest thing about it. It's overall a fascinating story and one for all music fans.