The wonderful documentary by Malik
Bendjelloul, Searching for Sugarman, ,
functions in various ways. It brings to life the elusive and unknown story of
Sixto Rodriguez, popularly known as ‘Sugarman’ or ‘Rodriguez’. It addresses
itself to the fiction of the tragic demise of Rodriguez and in the end the reality of where Rodriguez
ended up, since his disappearance, after he recorded his last album in 1971. It
is investigative, revealing and heart rending. Its power lies in demonstrating
that Sixto Rodgriguez was a folk musician who did not clinch a commercial and
cultural following in the United States, but unknown to him, he was a
celebrated musician in South Africa. For
South African writer Rian Malan (See Mail and Guardian, February 8 to 14,
Friday section, pp. 8&9) understanding Rodriguez through the lens of South
African hippiedom, there is a simple essentialist and binary explanation for
this. On the one hand, South African hippies were not racist ( really? How many
shared a Rodriguez album with a non-white during apartheid?) while middle class
white hippie America was and could
not appreciate the subversive message of
an American Latino (born of Mexican migrant workers). Hence the likes of Bob
Dylan thrives and becomes the leading cultural icon of America’s hippie
generation and an American commercially constituted legend. While there might be an element of truth about
racism prevalent in hippie America, Malan’s generalisation of the non-racial
orientation of South African hippies, gives us a very simplistic appreciation
of why Rodriguez chose to abandon his musical career and why he was celebrated
in South Africa.
Malan’s narrative fails to appreciate two
realities in Rodriguez’s existence. The first the political economy of a
commercialised music industry in the US, assimilating and blunting the
subversive edge of sixties folk music. Those who survived and came out on top,
tamed their radical folk roots and even in the end abandoned it to be
commercially successful. This is where Bob Dylan ended up. Rodriguez, chose a harder path, informed by a sense of fidelity to what his music was all
about. Rodriguez in acknowledging his
commercial failure, actually chose at the same time, to affirm his radical,
existentially authentic and anti-establishment message. He chose the path of
conviction and authenticity, themes very strong
in his lyrics. This is what lives on in South Africa; the authenticity
of the subversive folk musician Rodriguez. This is what was capsuled and
celebrated in South Africa for the past four decades.
Moreover, Malan fails to accept, which Sugarman the documentary touches on superficially, that
Rodriguez also chose to live within the realities of his situation. He was the
child of Mexican migrant workers, a working class child, who understood that
the reproduction of his own family and himself as a human was based on him
working to earn an income. If music, as work, could not generate such a life supporting
income, he was going to find it through being a construction worker. In a
sense, Malan fails to appreciate the deeper existential philosophy of Rodriguez
the worker and how this informed his choice to abandon the life of a worker in
music.
In addition,
Searching for Sugarman functions as a bridge between the star struck universe
of a predominantly white and South
African hippy following and its hero.
Such a following yearned to venerate the legend they constructed, in their
midst. It was about experiencing the celebrity spectacle. Sugarman had to be
consumed, live, on stage. More
specifically, South African hippies wanted the fairytale, they wanted the ‘knight in shining
armour’, Cinderalla or Arthur to appear
before them. It was in essence all about experiencing the commodified celebrity
spectacle. This is a challenge to Malan’s rather one sided
reading of Sugarman as merely ending Sixto Rodriguez’s ignorance about being a superstar
in South Africa and conferring such a status on him. The bridging role of Sugarman is about bringing together these two parallel universes: a
celebrity struck mainly white progressive audience (and for Malan mainly
hippies) and a Latino construction worker called Sixto Rodriguez, who was also,
at one point in his life a music worker.
Malan goes further to suggest that Sugarman functions to achieve a crucial
part of the American dream. It constitutes Sixto Rodriguez as an American
legend, mainly through South African hippie veneration. This is what Sugarman and in the end Sixto Rodriguez
is all about. An American legend whose time has come and who can now make money
and live happy thereafter…a sort of superficial hippyish ending to his life!
One cannot help feeling that Malan and his hippyish understanding and
appropriation of Rodriguez misses the
deeper and real Rodriguez.
It is important for Sixto Rodriguez, a
radical folk musician whose two albums Cold
Fact and Coming From Reality informed
a sub-culture in South Africa during the anti-apartheid struggle, be recognised
and celebrated. As a young anti-apartheid activist in the 1980s I experienced
him together with the more radical Dylan (the
non-commercial Dylan), Joan Baez, Leonard Cohen and later Tracy Chapman,
amongst others. And of course there was also Bob Marley and the message of Reggae.
We should not let Malan’s reading of Sugarman
take away from this function the movie plays. More importantly, we do not need
Rodriguez to be a commercialised American legend to be celebrated. The awards received by this documentary are
well deserved and resurrection of the radical folk music of Rodriguez it
achieves through mainstream and social media, through rocketing album sales, a
few more concerts and well deserved income for the music worker Rodgriguez are
all heartening.
However, Sugarman begins something which can only be accomplished by a deeper
appreciation of the real Rodriguez. According to one of his co-worker mates in
the documentary, he was a ‘silk worm who translated the raw material of reality
into poetry’. This begs deeper questions about the ideological and existential
make up of Rodriguez the ‘silkworm’. What prompted him as a construction worker
to dress up with a tuxedo in worksites? What kind of philosophy did he read and enjoy? Why
did he invite militant ‘Latino activists’ on to the stage when he performed in
California during the short span as a music worker? What are the social
conditions and understandings that inform the militant humanism running through
his music? What were the social and political questions that prompted Rodriguez
to enter an electoral race to be the mayor of Detroit? What ethical values
informed Rodriguez’s politics? Why did Rodriguez ensure his class location
never became a barrier to giving himself and his family a culturally rich
existence? The lyrics in Rodriguez’s songs challenge the in-authencity of capitalist
individualism, the cruelty of the powerful, exploitation and the deep
alienation of capitalist modernity.
Despite the importance of Sugarman it
does not assist us in understanding the sub-soil of Rodriguez’s existential consciousness
that gave birth to his captivating and poetic lyrics. We encounter a working class Rodriguez but without a full appreciation of his intellectual depth.
This can only come to the fore with a serious biography on Rodriguez, involving
him in clarifying who he is, what life experiences and what perspectives of the
human condition engendered his songs. To reach such depths such a biography should not be written by a hippie. Lets hope
someone with the time, energy and commitment to the real Rodriguez comes
forward to write a biography which would
be an important part of 20th
century music history.
Moreover, Sugarman prompts us to take Rodriguez beyond hippie nostalgia and
veneration and to ask what does the radical Rodriguez, the authentic voice of
folk music, mean for us today. For workers engaged in struggles for improved
wage and living conditions in South
Africa’s winelands and on the mines, these words from the song Cause in the album Coming From Reality have a profound resonance.
‘Cause
I lost my job two weeks before Christmas
And
talked to Jesus at the sewer
And
the Pope said it was none of his God damn business…
Cause
they told me everybody’s got to pay their dues
And I
explained that I had overpaid them…
Cause
how many times can you wake up in this comic book and plant flowers?’
For the deepening inequalities of our time,
brought about by capitalist fat cats, including American and South African
hippies occupying managerial boardrooms in transnational corporations, Rodriguez’s
song Sandrevan Lullaby, for instance, highlights the importance of a
capitalist civilisation, centred in the US, being in a state of decline. These
lyrics from the song make the point poetically:
‘Judges
with metermaid hearts
Order
supermarket justice starts
Frozen
children inner city
Walkers
in the paper rain
Waiting
for the knights that never came
The
hijacked trying so hard to be pretty…
America
gains another pound
Only
time will bring some people around
Idols
and flags are slowly melting
Another
shower of rice
To
pair it for some will suffice
The
mouthful asks for a second helping…’
The radical voice of Rodriguez speaks to our contemporary human condition.
It is a voice that chimes with the message of the Occupy movement in the US against
the 1 per cent and the movements struggling against the
oppressions of a post-apartheid South Africa. His universal militant humanist
message will continue to speak to the ongoing struggles of the oppressed all
over the world.
