SEARCHING FOR SUGAR MAN

An absolutely inspiring and luminous and admirable documentary. In the early 70's, a budding musician, Rodriguez, makes 2 albums and starts on another. Even though the record producers are totally blown away by his music and lyrics, he doesn't sell or get any fan base. eventually his record label drops him.

Throughout the film, snippets of all his songs are played and they are wonderfully unique and his voice is a combination of michael stipes from REM, and jose Feliciano and Bob Dylan. And best of all I can understand everything he sings; he's not one of the current "marble-mouth" crooners. Most of his songs are protest and political activist tunes but he also sings about loss and having friends and a good time; oh, also about drugs too (that is who Sugar man is).

One of his albums is brought to Cape Town, Africa in the 70's and he becomes an instant success. Over the next 25-30 years, about 500,000 copies of his album are sold and his musical style becomes imitated by African musicians. He is worshiped as a trendsetter. In the late 90's, a journalist becomes really curious as to what happened to him and why it is impossible to buy one of his albums in the U.S. (probably 6 were sold in total.).

After much investigation, one of the daughters of Rodriguez, stumbles upon a website set up by the journalist and contacts him and "the rest is history". Rodriguez goes to South Africa and does several sold-out concerts. For the first 15 minutes of each concert, the crowd cheers and screams and throws flowers and cries (i cried at this point also) even though Rodriguez had done nothing except walk on stage.

His voice sounded just as authoritative and strong as it did on his albums. Rodriguez goes back to his job (demolition of buildings and renovation) in Detroit but does travel to South Africa for more concerts every so often.

I instantly liked Rodriguez and not for his stupendous music but because he is truly a humble and accepting man. His attitude is buddhist in nature: when asked what he felt  when his record label dropped him in '75 because he hadn't sold any records; he said "well, that's the vagaries of the music industry" and when he was asked for his response to the overwhelming accolades in Africa and his undying constant success over 3 decades, he said "well, i've always enjoyed writing songs and singing them; it adds to the enjoyment when i can do it in front of people."

He was at peace with both a limousine picking him up from the airport in Africa as he was taking the bus to his hard labor job. and Besides that his music is awesome.