[donretag]

I spent 3 months in South Africa, primarily in Cape Town. Visted Mabu Vinyl, but sadly did not purchase anything (was backpacking, so traveling light). Owner was lovely.

The documentary is not exaggerating the fact that Rodriguez was immensely popular in South Africa. Heard his music playing on iPods in bars, young 20 somethings that not only listened to him, but so did their parents.

The movie does exaggerate his disappearance. Rodriguez toured Australia, so he knew he had some popularity.

A few years later, I met the owner of Light in the Attic records, the reissue label that repressed Rodriguez's albums. They acquired the rights before the documentary, and even they were amazed at the popularity of his music after the movie. He told basically that Rodriguez paid for his house due to the sales.

[pistoriusp]

What's interesting is that we, South Africans, had no idea that he wasn't a worldwide sensation, because he is so commonplace in our culture that we assumed he was a mega-star.

[OfSanguineFire]

In SA, were his fans mainly white, Coloured, or Black, or did he have an appeal across the country's ethnicities? (If the latter, I would be surprised, because when I cycled across SA for several months and stayed with members of all three groups, their respective communities' tastes in music seemed very different.)

[deepinthewoods]

I dunno about that, every time Sugar man or I Wonder started playing when I was growing up, someone would tell me "This guy isn't famous anywhere else! No-one even knows where he is!". I must have been told this factoid 20 times when I was a teenager.