Some Cold Facts about Circuits and Circuit Breakers
2013; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 14; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/17533171.2013.841062
ISSN1753-3171
Autores Tópico(s)Smart Grid Security and Resilience
ResumoAbstractSearching for Sugar Man, the celebrated 2012 documentary of Sixto Rodriguez's musical life, opens onto (but does not adequately address) important questions concerning musical circulation and reception. It is a story of two albums, Cold Fact (1970) and Coming From Reality (1971) that traveled in very different ways in the USA and South Africa and of how these travels were shaped by cultural politics and cultural circuits. But, it is also a story about the ways that the music industry complicated these cultural circuits by muddying and interrupting financial pathways—that is, by acting as a circuit breaker. Unfortunately, the film misses an opportunity to explore any of these stories in a sustained manner, crafting instead a narrative that engages them only to the extent that they help the director, Malik Bendjelloul, present a lost-and-found narrative of musical rebirth, featuring South African fans and audiences as the supporting cast. In choosing this entertaining, but myth-making path, the film itself configures new circuits and inaugurates additional circuit breakers that must be disentangled from and read in relation to Rodriguez's musical life.Keywords: RodriguezDetroitCape Townmusic industryroyalties Notes1 See Aparicio and Jáquez, Musical Migrations; Pacini Hernandez, Oye Como Va Hybridity and Identity in Latino Popular Music; and Flores, From Bomba to Hip Hop.2 Faul and Karoub, "Rodriguez Seeks Lost Royalties From Albums Sold Oversees While He Lived in Obscurity," online.3 Greene, "Rodriguez: Ten Things You Don't Know About the 'Searching for Sugar Man' Star." http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/rodriguez-10-things-you-dont-know-about-the-searching-for-sugar-man-star-20130328
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