NY – Sixto Rodríguez, the dark Chicano rocker who found a professional renaissance after his music became a cult following abroad, has died at the age of 81. His story from beginning to end was like a movie.
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Rodríguez, star of the Oscar-winning documentary ‘Looking for Sugar Man’, died on Tuesday, August 9, according to a statement posted on his official website, which does not give details about the causes of death.
“We send our deepest condolences to his daughters -Sandra, Eva and Regan- and to his entire family,” the statement reads.
Born on July 10, 1942 in the city of Detroit (northeast, Michigan) into a Mexican family, Rodríguez worked in vehicle assembly lines while in his free time he devoted himself to music.
In the 1970s he released two albums that went unnoticed in the United States but would make him a cult musician abroad, although he didn’t know it until later: ‘Cold Fact’, which contained his best-known songs’ Sugar Man’ and ‘I Wonder’, and ‘Coming From Reality’.
Faced with the failure of his two albums, Rodríguez gave up music to dedicate himself to the quiet life of a blue-collar worker in Detroit.
He earned a philosophy degree from Wayne University and was involved in politics. He ran unsuccessfully for city mayor, alderman, and state senate.
Meanwhile, their music, particularly ‘Sugar Man’, made its way through apartheid South Africa, into New Zealand and Australia, becoming a cult song.
In 1979 he was surprised to be asked to perform in Australia, where he returned two years later.
Rodríguez came to think that those concerts were “strange coincidences” and was amazed that people knew the lyrics to his songs.
His public absence fueled his fans’ belief that Rodríguez was dead.
In South Africa you are bigger than Elvis
Internet changed the life of the worker-musician. His daughter Eva found pages dedicated to his father, and the fans found it. In 1998 he undertook a successful tour of South Africa.
“I told him: in South Africa you are bigger than Elvis,” recalled one of his fans, Stephen Segerman, in an interview with the Detroit News in 2008.
According to Segerman, the rawness and themes dedicated to escaping from harsh reality – “Sugar Man” is a surreal ode to a drug dealer – hit home in apartheid-era South Africa.
Johannesburg-born musician Dave Matthews has covered Rodríguez. He was “one of my childhood heroes,” he said.
“Crazy”
Rodríguez’s albums were reissued on compact discs and his extraordinary story was immortalized in the film ‘Searching for Sugar Man’ (2012), which has won several awards, including an Oscar and a BAFTA.
It also contributed to Rodríguez’s late success in his own country, the United States, fueling the revival of his musical career.
Four decades after releasing his albums, he was invited to perform at the Coachella and Glastonbury festivals, and he embarked on several world tours.
“I just want to be treated like some random legend,” Rodriguez told the audience at a successful performance in Detroit after the film’s premiere.
In a 2013 interview with the Detroit Free Press, he expressed his own amazement at his story, a day laborer turned rock star.
“I’ve been chasing music since I was 16. Now I’m 70, so it’s crazy that this happened,” said Rodríguez, for whom all this was like “an irony of fate, a stroke of luck.”
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