Rodriguez was a young folk singer in the Midwest in the late ’60s. There were a lot of them then. But there was something about this guy, his Dylan-esque voice and haunting lyrics, that made local producers sit up and take notice. So one of them got him a record deal. And how many albums did he sell?
“Six,” says one industry insider flatly. “Nobody was interested in listening to him,” laments another.
But one of those copies got carried over to South Africa, where, for some reason, it became as wildly popular as it was obscure over here. Only nobody ever told Rodriguez.
This is all you need to — all you really should — know before seeing “Searching for Sugar Man,” a terrific documentary about a decades-long search, by two South African Rodriguez fans, for the story behind their enigmatic pop idol. Bigger than Elvis, they say, he provided the anthems for a generation of anti-apartheid protests — and yet, legend has it, despondently torched himself onstage one tragic night. Or did he?
Director Malik Bendjelloul expertly paces this strange and moving film, half mystery and half meditation on art, fame, the music biz and the definition of a meaningful life.
Some questions are left frustratingly unanswered, though: How, even in the pre-Internet Stone Age, could a recording artist be so cut off from contact with and, more significantly, royalties from an entire country? Sussex Records founder Clarence Avant, ostensibly responsible for the latter, gives the film’s most menacing interview, neatly sweeping the issue aside while getting misty about Rodriguez’s inability to hit it big here in the US.
Interwoven through the film, set to wintry streetscapes in Detroit and historic footage of South African protests, are songs by the artist, who sounds so like some of the biggest names of his era that it’s baffling we’ve never heard of him — or perhaps you have, if you are one of those prescient six.