Musician Sixto Rodríguez, protagonist of the documentary ‘Searching for Sugar Man’, dies at 81

The singer-songwriter Jesús Sixto Díaz Rodríguez, known as Rodríguez, whose life was told in the documentary Searching for Sugar Man, awarded an Oscar in 2013, has died this Wednesday at the age of 81, as announced by the musician’s official website. “It is with great sadness that we announce that Sixto Díaz Rodríguez has passed away earlier today. We send our condolences to his daughters, Sandra, Eva and Regan, and to all of his family.”

Rodríguez, of working class and Mexican origin, was born in Detroit in 1942. He went through different non-musical jobs until he began to perform in clubs in his city, which attracted the attention of several producers related to the mythical Motown Records label: it seemed that from The Motor City underground was emerging an unpolished diamond, one who resembled Bob Dylan himself. In his brief career he only recorded two albums, in the early 1960s: Cold Fact (1970) and Coming from Reality (1971). They passed without pain or glory.

In the documentary Searching for sugar man (which refers to the title of the song Sugar man, “candy man”, that is, to a camel), written and directed by the Swede Malik Bendjelloul (died in 2014, the following year of the Oscar, at only 36 years old), tells the story of how Rodríguez discovers, after many years, now in his sixties, that in distant South Africa he is a star to whom tens of thousands of people pay homage, exchanging his recordings during the seventy eighty. There were even rumors about his death, committing suicide on stage. His music became an inspiration for the anti-apartheid movement.

“I wonder – about the tears in the children’s eyes, / And I wonder – about the dying soldier / I wonder – will the hate ever end? / And I wonder… and I worry, friend / Don’t you? ”, Says the chorus of his hit I Wonder.

Sixto Rodríguez, the American singer who became a phenomenon in Apartheid South Africa, without him knowing such success.

Meanwhile, in the United States, oblivious to his success, Rodríguez lives with a failed musician: the low acceptance of his records forced him to work as a construction worker, far from his musical vocation. The film, and his success at the Oscars, where he won the Best Documentary award, returned Rodríguez to the musical front row and made him enjoy his fame in South Africa. And, now, deserving of obituaries.

Since then it hasn’t been all rosy: in 2014, Rodríguez faced a lawsuit over ownership of the songs from his album Cold fact, and Rodríguez’s contracts with two record labels. After his resurrection, Rodríguez’s brief catalog had revalued remarkably and he was about to see who was going to make that revaluation profitable.

On the other hand, his status as a new myth in the history of music, as a strange phenomenon, as an enigma, allowed him to set foot on stages in parts of the world that were previously unknown to the artist. For example, in the same 2013, he gave a single concert in Spain at Poble Espanyol in Barcelona. He appeared before the more than 5,000 spectators just as he had built his stage image: rigorously black, with a wide-brimmed hat, dark hair and black-rimmed glasses with tinted lenses.

The critic of EL PAÍS, Luis Hidalgo, highlighted the affection of the public that empathized with his Cinderella story that night: “It is not every day that you see an artist who is unanimously loved beyond his own songbook (…) Hence the atmosphere, unusual in a concert. Because no one wanted a bad performance.” It didn’t go quite right. But “it was not the concert of a popular artist, it was the work of an honest person recovered by poetic justice.”

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