2023-08-09 16:13:57
09/08/2023
Updated at 4:52 p.m.
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The euphoria was such, the impact of the documentary was so astonishing, that at some point between 2012 and 2013, right between the golden statuette and the disenchantment of the live show, more than one came up and went so far as to say that there was nothing about Bob Dylan; that the really good one was him. Rodriguez. Sixto Rodriguez. His records, it is true, weren’t bad at all, but his career had little or nothing to do with that of the Duluth bard. Especially since until the director Malik Bendjelloul did not go out to fetch and roll ‘Searching For Sugar Man’ at the beginning of the last decade, nobody even knew it existed. Sixto Rodríguez, you say? No idea. Not included or provided.
The telegraphic version tells us about a promising artist who, after recording two albums with no commercial impact at the end of the sixties, was erased from the map. He disappeared. The extended one, on the other hand, is little less than a miracle. The lost ark of rock. Because while in and around Detroit copies of ‘Coming From Reality’ and ‘Cold Fact’ were dying in the buckets of balances, Rodríguez, who died this Tuesday at the age of 81, had become a true celebrity… in South Africa!
In full apartheid, the songs of this son of Mexican immigrants born in 1942 became a balm and one of the most incredible caroms in rock. Without concerts or any promotion, his records passed from hand to hand, were recorded and re-recorded, while his image grew bigger. Thus, while Sixto was fixing roofs in Detroit, entire families in Johannesburg chanted ‘I’ll Slip Away’ and ‘Crucify Your Mind’ and stretched the ‘a’ ‘Sugar Man’ as much as possible.
He, of course, has no idea. He sold so little ‘Coming From Reality’, his second album, that his record company fired him (shortly after it would go bankrupt: long live poetic justice) and he gave up his musical career. Goodbye to the dream of becoming the new Dylan; goodbye to that burning dream of spreading the word of him armed with little more than a guitar.
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