9. RodriguezCold Fact
“He’s a legendary character, Sixto Rodriguez, whose music was on the back burner for a long time. He was born in Detroit but became hugely popular in South Africa, if not in the USA, on the back of this album made in 1970. His music was played but it was commonly assumed that he was no longer living, that he had committed suicide which is not the case at all, he’s still with us today. Then along come Light In The Attic records in the USA, the same people who put out the I am The Centre collection of New Age music from 1950 onwards. They found him and injected him back into the mainstream – there’s a wonderful film, Searching For Sugar Man about that. It shows him going to South Africa to perform and his astonishment that people knew him and who he was.
I certainly wouldn’t describe his music as ambient! But I relate to him and his music catches me in a way that ambient music doesn’t. But that goes for a lot of groovy artists who I can relate to, the subject matter, and also in Sixto’s case, his back story. Plus, he has a very distinctive vocal sound indeed.
