US Music Flop Emerges as Anti-Apartheid Anthem
July 25, 2012
Rodriguez, a folk-rock troubadour from Detroit, cut a couple of albums in the 1970s which flopped in the US. What he didn't know was that his music became popular in South Africa.(Photo by Hal Wilson, Courtesy Sony Pictures Classics)
Forty years ago, an American singer-songwriter whose music never found an audience at home became a star in South Africa, but he didn't know it until decades later.
A new documentary by a Swedish filmmaker tells the remarkable story of "Searching For Sugar Man."
"It's still a bit of a mystery how the first copy of 'Cold Fact' actually came to South Africa, but it spread very quickly," says Capetown record store owner Stephen Segerman. "To many of us South Africans, he was the soundtrack to our lives."
Segerman is talking about Rodriguez, a folk-rock troubadour from the American midwest city of Detroit who cut a couple of albums in the 1970s. But they flopped and he went on with his life.
As Stockholm-based filmmaker Malik Bendjelloul discovered, the music took on a life of its own on the other side of the world.
"In 2006, I was traveling around Africa and South America for six months looking for stories, and in Cape Town I met Stephen "Sugar" Segerman, the detective in the story, and he told me how this all came about and I thought 'this is the best story I ever heard in my life,'" says Bendjelloul. "It's about a man who didn't know he was famous."
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