Sixto Rodríguez, Sugar Man

Les comparto esta biografía narrativa que escribí para clase de inglés hace unos años sobre un grandioso artista: Sixto Rodríguez.

Imagine this. You’re a Mexican-American and you want to become a musician. You write a few songs, set up a contract with a producer at Sussex records, you release a few albums. And nobody likes them. You sell about six copies in all of the United States of America. Sussex fires you and goes bankrupt in 1975. You say “well crap, that didn’t work out”. You feel a little bit disappointed but you carry on with your life, turn a new page and start working on constructions. A few years later, it turns out that people in Australia actually liked your music and another surprise: they think you died! So you fly to Australia, show everyone you are very much alive, thank you, you go on tour, give a few concerts, and that’s that. You go back to America and retire from that public life in 1981.

We skip a few years and in 1998 your daughter finds a whole website (remember the Internet wasn’t what it is today so having a website was a big deal back then) dedicated to your music and you’re like “whaaaaaat? I was never that good” only it turns out you were. Unbeknownst to you, people in South Africa adore you. You are a music god to them and have been for the past twenty years at least. You even reached a platinum disc over there and again, they think you died.

That is the story of how Sixto Rodriguez found out that what he thought had been a complete failure in the music industry, turned out to be a complete success halfway across the world. Copies of his records were sold out in South Africa, his songs were the anthems for many of the people’s lives and started revolutionary movements down there, they idolized him, he was a source of inspiration to many and more. And they thought he was dead. Although nobody was quite sure about how he had died. There were hundreds of stories about how he had committed suicide. Some people said he lit himself on fire while on stage at a concert, others said he shot himself. He was a complete mystery both in death and in his life. So some people decided to do a documentary on how he died, only to find out he was still alive! Sixto went on tour a few more times in Australia and South Africa but it wasn’t until this award winning documentary Searching for Sugar Man was released in 2012 that Rodriguez reached world fame. Of course, this documentary wouldn’t have existed if it wasn’t for the fact that Rodriguez had no idea about how successful he had become in South Africa, if he hadn’t thought himself a complete and utter failure. So it was thanks to his failure that he reached success.

Surprisingly enough, his newfound success didn’t change much in Sixto’s life. By the time it reached him, he had already settled down and had a family so he didn’t turn his life into that of a rockstar. He maintained his ordinary lifestyle. This is yet another way in which he achieved success through failure. Many artists pursue their careers way past the point in which they should have retired. Their art becomes stale and tasteless or they lose their way and turn to a life of drugs and sex, drunk with their fame and fortune and they often lose or neglect the people that love them the most. Sixto avoided all that when he abandoned his musical career. So in the end, his career failed but he succeeded in maintaining his life which, in my opinion, is much more important.