Rockdrigo / Rodríguez: a parallelims

Abstract

Malik Bendjelloul's documentary Searching for Sugarman (2012) has revealed on a global scale one of those rockers from the seventies whose work had been relegated. One of the most interesting questions it raises is the link that the South African public established with the music of the American Sixto Rodríguez. Without deliberately being a political or protest singer, his records were censored in apartheid South Africa for dealing with issues such as drug addiction. We know that censorship is an incentive to stimulate interest and this is no exception. Rodríguez became an icon of the political struggle against a retrograde system in the African country. The black legend of his death by immolation at the end of a concert spread with such success that it took nearly twenty years for someone to figure out who that rockstar was.