Searching for Sugar Man in Song of Solomon and Sixto Rodriguez

Have you ever noticed how the beautiful, haunting poem, "Sugar Man," by Sixto Rodriguez, a Mexican-American Detroit folk musician whose music was legendary for liberal whites in apartheid South Africa, could be linked to Toni Morrison's excellent novel, Song of Solomon? Although I am sure there is no direct connection between Sixto Rodriguez and Toni Morrison, since Rodriguez's music never was big in the US during the 1970s and he worked as a laborer in Detroit after his recording career tapered off. Regardless, I find it fascinating how this Detroit singer-guitarist wrote a song about a "Sugarman" in the same decade that Toni Morrison's excellent novel also included a Sugarman character, in a bluesy folk song sung by children in reference to Solomon, an ancestor of Milkman's who learned how to fly. I first read Song of Solomon a few years ago, and wrote about it on this blog. Here is the song in the novel about Solomon/Sugarman

O Sugarman don't leave me here

Cotton balls to choke me

O Sugarman don't leave me here

Buckra's arms to yoke me. . . .

Sugarman done fly away

Sugarman done gone

Sugarman cut across the sky

Sugarman gone home. (Morrison 49)

As for Rodriguez, I heard about him while in Cape Town, South Africa. A stunning documentary on the search for Sixto Rodriguez by some South Africans who grew up loving his music for its rebellious tone and message to those living under apartheid dictatorship, was often mentioned and I finally watched it while flying from Johannesburg to Germany. Everybody should watch Searching for Sugar Man to read about the quest to discover the identity of 'Sugar Man' Sixto Rodriguez, which the clever South Africans finally pinpointed to a specific US region because of a lyric referring to a place in Michigan. Eventually, they got Rodriguez to come to South Africa and perform, and it's quite magical for the audience of the film and the plethora of South Africans in the concert to see the legendary Sugar Man in the flesh! Since the documentary won many accolades, one hopes that Sixto Rodriguez's music and life gets the recognition he deserves for his contributions to folk-rock and contribution to an ethos of resistance half-way around the world. The humble troubadour, cheated by the guy who collected the royalties from his record sales in South Africa, has apparently used his profits from tours in South Africa and elsewhere to share with friends and family, and he still works as a construction worker! Listen to "Sugar Man" here, and you may see some of the parallels in this "Sugar Man" and the Sugarman of Toni Morrison. 

Indeed, Rodriguez was a sort of Sugarman in the Morrisonian sense because he was "the answer that makes my questions disappear" for anti-apartheid white youth of South Africa. Like the ancestral Solomon of Milkman, this "Sugar Man" of Rodriguez makes questions disappear, and is believed by the singer to be of help, even though he is a drug dealer pushing "jumpers, coke, and sweet Mary Jane." Thus, this drug-dealing "Sugar Man" is far from the Morrison Sugarman who learned to fly, with flight as a common motif in African-American folklore for returning back to Africa, escaping the horrors of slavery in the US South. Nevertheless, one sees that, to Rodriguez and rebellious youth living in oppressive societies, the escape via drugs and the inherent rebelliousness of partaking, like learning to fly, learning to ride the air in Morrison's novel, are both powerful experiences. To be honest, I am sure there was no influence from Rodriguez on Morrison's novel, and their respective "Sugar Men" are vastly different, yet each provides an answer to one's past and current problems, and each one is heavily flawed in their own way. For instance, the Solomon in Morrison's novel learns to fly, but leaves his family behind in the process of doing so, which contradicts my perspective on the novel since flight to me was a metaphor for maturity and learning to love. Likewise, Rodriguez's "Sugar Man" presumably dies after meeting a "false friend" in the dusty lonely streets of Detroit, so despite his escapist and "silver magic ships," he too cannot escape the harsher realities of life that pervade even into the consciousness of the drug-addled mind.