Sixto Rodriguez, the folk legend who inspired a nation, dies at 81
He was a musical genius who had no idea how much he meant to people all over the world. Sixto Rodriguez, the Detroit folk musician whose songs of social justice became anthems for anti-apartheid activists in South Africa, died on Tuesday at the age of 81 after a short illness.
Rodriguez released two albums in the early 1970s, Cold Fact and Coming from Reality, but they flopped in the US and he faded into obscurity. He worked as a laborer, a carpenter, a factory worker, and even ran for mayor of Detroit, but never gave up on his music.
Unbeknownst to him, his music became hugely popular in South Africa, where his songs like “I Wonder” and “Sugar Man” resonated with a generation of young people who were fighting against the oppressive regime. He was rumored to have died by suicide on stage, but two South African fans, Stephen Segerman and Craig Bartholomew-Strydom, discovered he was alive and living modestly in Detroit in the 1990s.
They contacted him and brought him to South Africa for a series of concerts that were…
