Once again, Sixto Rodríguez died. Last August 8. On another occasion he died like a saint on the banks of the Ganges: they say he blew himself up by setting himself on fire while singing. It turns out that that first death, deep down, was simply the silent passing of time. His voice rose like the roar of the crowd, in the historic 1960s, Woodstock, counterculture, rhythms, opposition to the Vietnam War and the sexual revolution. And then that voice disappeared into the cosmos, like stardust. In his country, the colossal empire of North America was forgotten. He returned as a construction worker. In South Africa, and without knowing it, he became the spiritual choir of a generation, a sign of resistance against apartheid, a protective cloak of a blessed destiny.

His name was actually Jesús Sixto Díaz Rodríguez. He was born in Detroit on July 10, 1942, in the industrial boom of the future ghost town. Latin American blood flowed through his veins. As he died many times, he was reborn, again and again. When he put down his mason’s tools and went on a South African tour in 1998, he was greeted like a god. The entire stadium proclaimed it what it has always been: a soundtrack for all those who fought against the heinous system of racial segregation and oppression. People of all ages sang his music, unable to believe what a miracle it was to see their idol alive. In 2006, re-engaged in his discreet life as a mystical proletarian, he was sought out by the Swedish director and producer Malik Bendjelloul to make his film In Search of Sugar and tell his legend through pictures and music. A fascinating story of rebirth.

Sixto Rodríguez had a habit of returning to the stage when he returned to life: carrying the intensity with which rituals and transformations are lived. His texts, maintained in a meticulous act of unrestrained writing, like Cervantes, alluded to stories of the suburbs, broken hearts in the neighborhoods, drugs, anger, the oblivion that hung over Detroit, that modern Teotihuacán still in ambivalent agony. Perhaps because of the writing and singing of these stories, his songs – Sugar Man is about a drug dealer who may have been a hermit in that disaster – became the embodiment of the most important struggle South Africans waged in the frenetic and traumatic 20th century.

(…) it cannot die, as they say it is – once again – on August 8, because it is a continuous rebirth…

So Sixto Rodríguez cannot die, as they say he did – once again – on August 8, because it is a continuous, premature, surprising rebirth. Those who discovered it inevitably preserve the story of its discovery. A finding that implies, and in this case it is evident, an offer. Something is surrendered, disappears, is reborn. And my way of understanding is even contradictory, because he did not seek immortality and he does not need it. I think some of that is felt in his song Crucify your minda beautiful piece about the need for self-compassion, to breathe easier, to search for oneself. (OR)