“The (anti-)establishment blues”: la doppia geografia di Sixto Rodriguez tra marginalità e sovversione

Abstract

The life and career of Sixto Rodríguez, the American folk-singer born in Detroit in 1942, weave together two different places. On the one hand, we find Detroit where at the turn of the Sixties Rodríguez recorded two albums without success. On the other, there is Cape Town where unknown to Rodríguez his music became very influential and its subversive contents found an unexpected space of resonance. This paper aims at investigating the double geography emerging from this astonishing musical biography. The analysis will focus on the complex relationship between musical practices and spatial formations, examining how power geometries shape and carve the field of their mutual production. If the failure of Rodríguez in the United States unveils the race and class connotation of the folk music industry, in the apartheid South Africa his songs seem to be capable of articulating political subjectivities and opening up a space for cultural critique. It is exploring the distance between these two musical geographies that we will try to reflect on the intersections between spatiality, politics and music culture