‘Sugar Man’ Rodriguez reflects on hard-won success | The Columbia Daily Tribune – Columbia, Missouri

The differences wrought in Sixto Rodriguez’s life came into crystal-clear focus with the admission of just one detail. Talking by phone last week, the 70-year-old let it slip, with little pretense, that there was a “60 Minutes” crew in his Detroit hometown, ready to film him the next day for a segment slated to run in October.

“This re-entry or discovery continues,” he said with the hint of a laugh.

What a season of discovery it has been — both for music lovers and Rodriguez himself. The singer, who recorded two vibrant folk albums in 1970 and 1971, thought his work had been lost to the passages of time and ravages of the music industry. Yet, through a number of fortuitous events, his music made it overseas and acted as a cultural catalyst, inspiring change in apartheid-era South Africa. Rodriguez’s discovery of his true impact — and an unearthing of the man himself — was breathlessly captured in Malik Bendjelloul’s film “Searching for Sugar Man.”

via ‘Sugar Man’ Rodriguez reflects on hard-won success | The Columbia Daily Tribune – Columbia, Missouri.