The many mysteries of Rodriguez - Searching for Sugar Man

No doubt Malik Bandjelloul's Searching for Sugar Man will win an Academy Award as best documentary of the year, and deservedly, as this is a totally fascinating story about art and culture and commerce and personality and American cities, and a very difficult project to bring about I think. There are in effect three time points, and, with very limited archival footage, B. has to tell this story with contemporary footage - which he manages to do without making it seem as if the movie is all about talking heads (as many documentaries are). Narrative line in brief: in 1970 a couple of Detroit music producers discovered in a dive bar a singer-songwriter so shy that he performed with his back to the audience; he was more or less a street person, had a beautiful voice and wrote interesting lyrics that the producers compare with Dylan. They sign him, he cuts two albums, each reviewed well, but no sales, and the record label drops him - and then the singer, Rodriguez, drops out of sight entirely, never records again. As it happens, for some reason hard to explain, his music gets discovered in then Apartheid and brutally autocratic South Africa where Rodriguez becomes a sensation, selling half-a-million albums. SA youth continue to buy his music and revere his few songs over the next two decades - and mysterious stories about Rodriguez make the rounds - it's generally believed that in despair he killed himself during a concert performance. In about 1998, two SA guys, a rock writer and record-store owner, begin to try to find out what really happened to Rodriguez; with some detective work and with queries on line (this was way before Facebook and other tools that make this kind of search much easier today), they learn that R. was still alive, working in construction in Detroit. They bring him to SA where he does a series of sold-out concerts, TV appearances, etc. In a way, that's the end of the story, but as noted there's very little footage; Bandj. puts the doc together by interviewing all the principals, including R's three very nice and lovely daughter and R. himself, living today in rundown tenement in Detroit, still working construction, looking and sounding quite the worse for wear, but very modest and not at all bitter about the industry. Apparently the movie has given his career a 2nd revival. We're left still with a # of mysteries, as with all excellent documentaries: If he was really so great, why was he never played in the US? Well, he wasn't really that great - during that era there were dozens of artists touted as the the next, the black, the female Bob Dylan - Dylan opened the way for singer-songwriters in the rock era, but none of the dozens of others rose to his level, and though some have had long careers, most went off into obscurity or playing churches and coffee houses. Moreover, I think the production of his albums was horrible - way over-orchestrated and completely out of the spirit of the kind of music R. was creating. Why South Africa? There are many such instances, of a singer or writer catching on with one particular culture for one reason or another - but this success seems to be part of the censorship in SA (few others got through maybe) and perhaps the softer lyrics and orchestration seemed more palatable and reassuring against the brutality of times? Where did the $ go? R. got no royalties from SA, obviously - suggestion that his US producers stole the $, or that royalties were never sent. What's R. really like? It's so odd that he's capitalized so little on his talent and his world success, we suspect there may be some personality disorder of substance-abuse issue - or maybe he's just a unique sole - we don't learn that much about how he is today, and maybe that mystery should remain.