![]() When Segerman and Bartholomew begin their investigation to uncover the mystery of Sixto Rodriguez, they take a cue from Watergate and decide to "follow the money." As each layer is unpeeled, it only adds another mystery. We find out that his album Cold Fact was distributed on a small South African label, that one of his songs, Sugar Man, was banned on the government-run radio station for its drug references, and that the anti-establishment lyrics of his songs such as The Establishment Blues struck a responsive chord with the growing student involvement in the anti-apartheid movement, and led indirectly to the Afrikaner protest musicians of the '80s. The film begins when Cape Town record shop owner and music fan Stephen Segerman, whose nickname "Sugar Man" mirrors one of Rodriguez' most famous songs, meets music journalist Craig Bartholomew-Strydom and the two undertake to investigate what had happened to him. Rumors began to circulate that, during an unsuccessful concert, he shot himself in the head or died from a drug overdose, but no one knew for sure how he died. ![]() All of this led to a growing mystique about an artist that no one knew anything about. Though no one knows exactly how, his albums somehow made their way to South Africa and circulated among white Afrikaans musicians. He looked like a drifter." The film demonstrates Rodriguez' striking presence using a mix of songs, interviews with those who knew him or knew about him, animation, and archival photos. A friend who remembers him at the time says, "There was something mysterious about him. Winner of the Jury Prize and the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival, Swedish filmmaker Malik Bendjelloul's moving documentary Searching for Sugar Man investigates the life of Rodriguez who grew up in a run-down working class area of Detroit, Michigan and worked mostly as a manual laborer, singing at night in small, smoke-filled bars. After a minor tour in Australia that brought neither success nor recognition, he was dropped from his record label and was not publicly heard from again. Though praised by critics, his haunting songs about love and loss, drugs and politics, such as "I Wonder," "Cause," and "Sugar Man" should have been hits, but, for some reason, were not. Sixto Rodriguez, a little known American folk-rock singer/songwriter in the tradition of Bob Dylan and Cat Stevens, released two albums in the early 1970s, Cold Fact, and Coming From Reality but failed to achieve any popularity. ![]()
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