Rags To Rags: A Sugar Man Story

What led to rodriguez’s commercial failure in the USA? In my opinion I think his commercial failure in the USA was due to his highly political music, that presumably did not relate to the United States at that time, his music also took a view point of being fairly poor in the states, and although he was deemed the next Bob Dylan, his music did not strike the public, If he had possibly been less political and less about poor life, it might have appealed to people a lot more than it did. Due to his none existent fame in the U. S, he was dropped from the label he was apart of, and so he ended his career, due to the circumstances of his failure to sell and appeal. Which factors led to his success in South Africa and how did politics help and hinder his success?There are multiple factors which led to his success in south Africa. One of the very major factors is that his music was incredibly political, although this failed in the U. S, it highly appealed to the south African’s because of the way that the country was being ran and how the public wanted to have a resistance against the government, I think this was very good as rodriguez’s music helped them create this resistance against how the country was being treat incredibly poorly. Another factor is that he was brought upon the country by a bootleg version of his record, and that was the only way that it was distributed within the country, because of the many rumors of his death and who the mysterious rodriguez was, it created a lot of hype within the country about the man who was deemed on par with the Beatles and the rolling stones.

Because of both these factors and the fact he didn’t even know about his success in another country, it made many people wonder whom he was and wanted to try and search for the sugar man. I think that sixto singing about being poor was very relatable to the south africans as most of the population within the country is very poor, so they had an outlet which related to them whereas, most other things in their country probably didn’t relate to their problems as most as other things within their country. Politics within the country was incredibly bad due to the fact that the government tried to focus on winning over the people instead of furthering the progress of the country’s wellbeing. There was a great public resistance, the public was very segregated, as only white people were allowed in the cities, though the black community wasn’t, unless they were working for the whites of the country. This gave strong criticism from many different countries, which started the withdrawal of investment from other countries that had stopped racism and segregation. Amidst all of this, nelson Mandela was imprisoned, which created an uproar in the country and surrounding countries, as well as campaigns to release him. The politics within the country greatly affected his success, not for the best as the government had banned highly political songs to be played on radio stations, in most cases these songs were scratched out on the record, so that they were unplayable and the radio station would know not to play that song/s. How has technology assisted? Technology assisted his story as people were hunting online for the infamous rodriguez as they didn’t know his whereabouts or if he was even alive.

The African public had made a website for him and because of the website his daughter had contacted the creators, to tell them he was alive. Because of this main technological advancement of the internet, South Africa finally got confirmation and reassurance and he got his belated success that he’d been longing for since the 1970s. Since the release of the documentary, what’s happened to him?Since the release of the documentary he’s became incredibly well known all over the world because of his amazing story of rags to riches. He is most likely the most famous he’s ever been because of the documentary, and due to this, he still performing live all over the world. He has went from being a commercial failure to becoming a complete success all around the world. Would/could this musical anomaly ever happen again? In conclusion, I think that this musical anomaly could happen again, as it had happened to another band, which had a documentary brought out about them, where they were a commercial failure within America and around the world, but were very popular in a variety of Asian countries. This type of situation isn’t rare and can happen to any band or musician within the world.