Sugarman and The Sorcerer's Stone
This isn’t becoming a music blog, but…
I have wanted to talk about this documentary a while, but have always felt like I would be cheating someone out of their chance to see it how I saw it. I saw it with NO IDEA what was coming. It will still be worth the watch after you read this, go rent it for $3.99 on a streaming service. But, lest I be scolded by a purist, consider that your SPOILER ALERT.
Searching for Sugarman is about a 1970s folk/rock musician who released a couple of albums to zero commercial success in the United States. Sixto Rodriguez (he goes by “Rodriguez”) worked basic labor jobs in demolition and small construction during his musical career. The first half of the film is a journey in search of this near mythical figure whose life and career met a tragic and self-inflicted end (on stage of all places). Rumors as to just how it happened were varied and fantastical.
What becomes evident is that, while he was a commercial failure in the United States, his records had garnered a measure of success in South Africa. Rodriguez had a true fanbase in the southern hemisphere, a group of people who knew his music and believed various versions of the story of his untimely death.
(Exactly) half-way through the film you realize that, well, he is NOT dead. He is not even sick. He is still working demolition and small construction in Detroit just like he was in the 1970s. The “rumors of his demise had been greatly exaggerated” to quote another folk legend, Mark Twain.
What is more, due to the political climate and his unique flavor of anti-establishment charisma, Rodriguez had not just collected an audience, he had captured the imagination of a throng of devotees. Many were searching for a voice that expressed their sense of unrest. South Africans interviewed on the film said things like,
“In that day, any record collection in any white middle class home contained Abbey Road, Bridge over Troubled Waters, and Rodriguez’s Cold Facts.”
One man said that Rodriguez was bigger than the Rolling Stones. He was “South Africa’s Elvis”.
How big was he? He was so big that when word got around that he had been found and that he was coming to play a concert in 1998, people assumed it was a hoax. Even members of the band that promoters would arrange to play with him said that they were prepared to find out it was not really him, but an impersonator, of which there was at least one in South Africa. He was so big that when he did arrive a reporter even asked his supposed daughter “(off-the-record) is this for real, its not really him, is it?”
Rodriguez had been the soundtrack of so many of their lives. His music had served as anthem for apartheid protest. Some of the tracks were even government ordered to be scratched off the vinyl copies at media companies to prevent radio play. The systematic suppression merely amplified his popularity.
The documentary crescendos with footage of his first concert in March 1998. After he and his family arrived by plane they skirted the limousines on the tarmac, not knowing the chauffeured cars were intended for them. En route to their destination they passed “light post after light post” with large signs featuring his face.
When he was introduced and walked out on the stage (to what his daughters hoped would be “at least 20 people”), he was met by a thunderous roar of thousands upon thousands of fans of all ages. “It must have gone on for 5-10 minutes, just cheering before he sang the first note,” said one observer. When they finally quieted to hear him at the microphone he simply said, “Thanks for keeping me alive”.
He played 6 sold out shows in a row, and when he sang, the people sang with him. This was the music that had helped shape their individual and corporate identities.
As you learn more about Rodriguez and his life back in Detroit you meet an extremely humble and grounded man who still loved music, but also loved the working poor. Not only was he an advocate for his community, he even ran for city council and mayor of Detroit. He wanted to be a voice of influence, and seemingly for all of the right reasons.
Why do I love this story?
Because I believe that it is a picture of something that we are all longing for. Whether we know it or not, I think that we all long for a world in which the things that you understand to be special about yourself are not only permitted but celebrated. The things that you have imagined to be your special gifts that the world convinces you are worthless or weird.
Rodriguez is a real life Harry Potter taken from the Privet Drive of Detroit to his very own Hogwarts of South Africa1. He suddenly found himself in a world where his music wasn’t just a footnote or a quirk, but it was his most celebrated gift to an entire culture. Even his frustrated political ambitions were realized in South Africa where his music had made a true societal impact in ways that he could have never imagined during his failed campaigns for municipal offices.
What would it be like to be transported to a world in which the things that made up your very heart and soul that had gone unappreciated, now drew crowds of thousands for weeks on end?
I love stories like this2 because they are built on the themes that I believe we are created to recognize. Though we labor and toil with glimpses of hope and glory to come, we oft suffer the painful friction of the lives we live rubbing up against the lives that we feel capable of living, that we feel that we might have even been created to live.
Harry Potter had lived the better part of his childhood in a closet under the stairs in the home of his resentful aunt and uncle. When he is finally told and shown that he is a wizard, all that which made him odd and despicable to his adopted family, had made him not just beautiful in the “wizarding world”, but irreplaceable.
Like Harry, Rodriguez went back to his Privet Drive (by choice). He continued to work in relative local obscurity, doing construction and demolition, making ends meet, and giving away most of the money that he received from performances scheduled from time to time for him in South Africa.
“Nothing beats reality,” he said, “so I went back to work.”
For Rodriguez, it is as if simply getting small glimpses of what it means to be realized and treasured, even just seen for his gifts was enough to sustain him in what he sensed was his other calling. To work and live in a broken community.
That is the hope of the message of Redemption in scripture.
Creation, Fall, Redemption, Glory
We need little glimpses of the Glory that is to come. The assurance that there is hope and there is a place where all that you are created to be will be recognized and made useful for some Great Purpose. Maybe we all need those glimpses from time to time to remain faithful in our current callings, to work and live in broken communities.
May the Holy Spirit give you glimpses of that Glory when you need it.
Potter fanatics will forgive the wording of this sentence. I realize there is a School of Wizardry in Africa called “Uagadou.” Which some might call “The Hogwarts of Africa”, in the way that you might call Ole Miss “The Harvard of Lafayette County.”
J.R.R. Tolkien writes of a similar idea in his short story “Leaf by Niggle”.