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I spent 3 months in South Africa, primarily in Cape Town. Visted Mabu Vinyl, but sadly did not purchase anything (was backpacking, so traveling light). Owner wa
by donretag 3y ago
I spent 3 months in South Africa, primarily in Cape Town. Visted Mabu Vinyl, but sadly did not purchase anything (was backpacking, so traveling light). Owner was lovely.
The documentary is not exaggerating the fact that Rodriguez was immensely popular in South Africa. Heard his music playing on iPods in bars, young 20 somethings that not only listened to him, but so did their parents.
The movie does exaggerate his disappearance. Rodriguez toured Australia, so he knew he had some popularity.
A few years later, I met the owner of Light in the Attic records, the reissue label that repressed Rodriguez's albums. They acquired the rights before the documentary, and even they were amazed at the popularity of his music after the movie. He told basically that Rodriguez paid for his house due to the sales.
- pistoriusp 3y agoWhat's interesting is that we, South Africans, had no idea that he wasn't a worldwide sensation, because he is so commonplace in our culture that we assumed he was a mega-star.
- deepinthewoods 3y agoI dunno about that, every time Sugar man or I Wonder started playing when I was growing up, someone would tell me "This guy isn't famous anywhere else! No-one even knows where he is!". I must have been told this factoid 20 times when I was a teenager.
- pistoriusp 3y agoHmmmmm... In which decade where you a teenager?
- gorlilla 3y agoMost likely their second decade.
- Sporktacular 3y agoNice.
- OfSanguineFire 3y agoIn SA, were his fans mainly white, Coloured, or Black, or did he have an appeal across the country's ethnicities? (If the latter, I would be surprised, because when I cycled across SA for several months and stayed with members of all three groups, their respective communities' tastes in music seemed very different.)
- pistoriusp 3y agoI think his songs resonated largely with white people who had a progressive viewpoint against the apartheid government.
- OfSanguineFire 3y agoThat is indeed surprising, because one thing I was told time and time again in SA -- and mostly by white people -- is that there simply wasn't white opposition to apartheid outside of a tiny handful (and old white people claiming today to have opposed it back then are hardly to be taken seriously). But Sixto records went platinum, so his audience must have encompassed many more white people.
- sgt 3y ago> and old white people claiming today to have opposed it back then are hardly to be taken seriously Sounds almost like you are trolling. There are number of ways of opposition. Most people just want to get on with their lives though and you don't have the time nor energy to protest. There were tons of different viewpoints from all population groups. It's not as black and white as you've been reading on the Internet.
- OfSanguineFire 3y ago> It's not as black and white as you've been reading on the Internet. As I said, my understanding has been formed by what I was told by local people while in SA. I have never actually read much about this matter on the internet.
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