Jimmy Cliff, reggae music pioneer, dies at 81

KINGSTON, Jamaica - Jimmy Cliff, the legendary Jamaican singer who along with Bob Marley popularised reggae, ska and rocksteady music over a six-decade career, has died, his wife Latifa Chambers announced on Facebook on Nov 24.

The cause was a seizure followed by pneumonia, she said.

Born James Chambers on July 30, 1944, during a hurricane in St James Parish, north-western Jamaica, he moved in the 1950s from the family farm to the country’s capital Kingston with his father, determined to succeed in the music industry.

At just 14, he became nationally famous for the song Hurricane Hattie, which he wrote.

Cliff would go on to record over 30 albums and perform all over the world, including in Paris, in Brazil and at the World’s Fair, an international exhibition held in New York in 1964. The following year, Island Records founder Chris Blackwell, the producer who launched Bob Marley and the Wailers, invited Cliff to work in Britain with him.

Cliff later went into acting, starring in the 1972 classic film The Harder They Come, directed by Perry Henzell, which introduced an international audience to reggae music. The movie portrayed the grittier aspects of Jamaican life, redefining the island as more than a tourist playground of cocktails, beaches and waterfalls.

“When I’ve achieved all my ambitions, then I guess that I will have done it and I can just say ‘great’,” Cliff said in a 2019 interview, as he was losing his sight.

“But I’m still hungry. I want it. I’ve still got the burning fire that burns brightly inside of me – like I just said to you. I still have many rivers to cross!”

Known in part for singles You Can Get It If You Really Want It and Many Rivers To Cross, as well as for his covers of Johnny Nash’s I Can See Clearly Now, which appeared on the soundtrack of the 1993 movie Cool Runnings, and Cat Stevens’ Wild World, Cliff was a prolific writer who weaved his humanitarian views into his songs.

Bob Dylan said Cliff’s track Vietnam was the best protest song ever written.

The anti-establishment bent of Cliff’s music gave a voice not only to the hardships faced by Jamaicans, but also to the spirit and joy that persevered in spite of poverty and oppression. Over the years, Cliff worked with The Rolling Stones, Elvis Costello, Annie Lennox and Paul Simon.

In 2012, he won a Grammy Award for best reggae album for Rebirth, which was produced by punk band Rancid’s Tim Armstrong, and another Grammy in 1984 for Cliff Hanger.

Cliff received the Order of Merit, the highest honour in the arts and sciences, from the Jamaican government. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2010. REUTERS