I’m a musical political | Sixto Rodriguez, 1942-2023
Sixto Rodriguez
“I’ve had such an ordinary life.”
“My family, we’re indigenous people from San Luis Potosi in Central Mexico. My father moved to Detroit
and brought all of us because the automobile companies were paying great wages.”
” I’m Mexican, and we do a lot of singing, and it was my brother’s guitar
that I’d practice on, and he would say, ‘Who’s that playing my guitar?'”
“I was ready for the world. I don’t think the world was ready for me.”
“I live below my means. I think that’s a good discipline because you never can tell.”
“I’m not an ascetic.”
“Entertainment news doesn’t interest me.”
” I want to be mayor of the world. Don’t give me too much money or too much power.”
” I’m a lucky man.”
Sixto Rodriguez
” Voice is the first instrument.”
“Music is a living art. You re-create it.”
“I used protest music as a vehicle.”
” I loved the Woody Guthrie tradition of speaking about what’s happening to the country.”
“I’m a musical political, I tend to stick to what I see happening outside my front door.”
“I play by ear – I’m self-taught. And so everything I do is through that technique.”
“I loved Jimmy Reed, the chord changes, the lyrics.”
“I don’t much listen to music as I study it: who’s doing what, who wrote it.”
“I have a sloppy style of playing guitar. A percussive style. Unique in fact.”
“I like to say that I do covers of my own songs. And I have about a dozen bands all over the world. That’s no exaggeration. I have a South African band, an Australian band, Swedish bands, English bands, American bands. They’re all notable musicians, too.”
” I think that many of the issues they were facing in South Africa were the same as those I was singing about. Conscription, resisting the draft, government repression – I mentioned all those things in my songs.”
“Rock ‘n’ roll is a crazy world, and it’s how things work out you can’t predict.”
” I’ve only written 30 songs or something. Dylan’s written over 500 songs. There’s no comparison. He’s the Shakespeare of rock ‘n’ roll and popular music.”
” I’ve always covered some Dylan songs. I do one or two. And I do them because they’re great songs. You know some people cover songs they wish they could have written, not me. I like to cover songs I know I could not have ever written. “
“All my life, I never gave up on music and though there was a lot of disappointment for some that the commercial thing never happened, it has never been a disappointment for me.”
“The film, ‘Searching For Sugar Man,’ has excited my music career.”
“The earth is going to survive, it’s the people that aren’t.”
“About love, don’t be a silent partner. And be gentle with your anger.”
“Many of us come into the world with a clenched fist, but we all leave with an open hand.”
” Beware of current truths.”
” Education, information and knowledge are all one.”
“You can’t get around certain stuff, whether it’s in Darfur or on your block at home. What makes us political is your home turf, your family, your life space. You walk down the street, and automatically a human being is territorial, and political happens in that.”
“Where other people live in an artificial world, I feel I live in the real world. And nothing beats reality.”
“You want to know the secret of life? It is to breathe in and out. And the mystery of life? You never know when it is going to end.”
Sixto Rodriguez, 1942-1923
