Jimmy Cliff, one of the most prominent and beloved proponents of reggae music, has died at the age of 81.<\/p>\n
A star since the 1960s, he helped to bring the sound of Jamaica to a global audience through hits such as Wonderful World, Beautiful People and You Can Get It If You Really Want.<\/p>\n
His lead role as a gun-toting rebel in the 1972 crime drama The Harder They Come is a cornerstone of Jamaican cinema and was attributed as the movie that brought reggae to America.<\/p>\n
Cliff’s wife, Latifa Chambers, announced his death via a statement on Instagram.<\/p>\n
“It’s with profound sadness that I share that my husband, Jimmy Cliff, has crossed over due to a seizure followed by pneumonia,” she wrote.<\/p>\n
“I am thankful for his family, friends, fellow artistes and coworkers who have shared his journey with him.<\/p>\n
“To all his fans around the world, please know that your support was his strength throughout his whole career.<\/p>\n
“Jimmy, my darling, may you rest in peace. I will follow your wishes.”<\/p>\n
Her message was also signed by their children, Lilty and Aken.<\/p>\n
Born James Chambers in 1944, Cliff grew up as the eighth of nine children in abject poverty in the parish of St. James, Jamaica.<\/p>\n
Blessed with a sweet, mellifluous voice, he began singing at his local church at the age of six.<\/p>\n
By the time he was 14, he’d moved to Kingston and adopted the surname Cliff to express the heights he intended on reaching.<\/p>\n
He recorded several singles before topping the Jamaican charts with his own composition, Hurricane Hattie.<\/p>\n
In 1965, he relocated to London to work with Island Records – later the home of Bob Marley – but the label’s attempts to make his sound palatable to rock audiences weren’t entirely successful at first.<\/p>\n
He eventually struck gold with the 1969 single Wonderful World, Beautiful People – an upbeat, feelgood anthem; and the more politically-charged Vietnam, which Bob Dylan called “the best protest song ever written”.<\/p>\n
Its lyric tells the story of a young soldier who writes from the war, promising his mother he’ll be home soon; only for her to receive a telegram the next day, informing her of his death.<\/p>\n
Cliff reflected on the song in 1986, telling reggae archivist Roger Steffens: “The essence of my music is struggle. What gives it the icing is the hope of love.”<\/p>\n
Cliff became an international star with The Harder They Come, expressly written for the movie of the same name, in which he played Ivan Martin, a young man trying to break into Jamaica’s corrupt music industry.<\/p>\n
“The film opened the door for Jamaica,” Cliff recalled. “It said, ‘This is where this music comes from.'”<\/p>\n
Cliff contributed four songs to the soundtrack, including the gospel hymn Many Rivers To Cross, which reflected his early days as a struggling artist in the UK.<\/p>\n
“I was still in my teens,” he later recalled. “I came full of vigour: I’m going to make it, I’m going to be up there with the Beatles and the Stones.”<\/p>\n
“And it wasn’t really going like that, I was touring clubs, not breaking through. I was struggling with work, life, my identity. I couldn’t find my place. Frustration fuelled the song.”<\/p>\n
Instead, the film and its soundtrack won him international acclaim. Rolling Stone magazine even named it one of their top 500 albums of all time.<\/p>\n
During the 1980s, he collaborated with the Rolling Stones on their Dirty Work album, and he returned to the US charts in 1993 with his cover of I Can See Clearly Now, from the soundtrack for Cool Runnings, which followed the escapades of Jamaica’s bobsled team.<\/p>\n
His other recordings included the Grammy Award-winning albums Cliff Hanger (1985) and Rebirth (2012), a nostalgic return to form.<\/p>\n
Cliff entered the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2010, calling it “a great thrill and an honour”.<\/p>\n
Inducting him, Fugees star Wyclef Jean said he’d been inspired by Cliff’s success as a young boy growing up in Haiti.<\/p>\n
“When we saw Jimmy Cliff, we saw ourselves,” he said.<\/p>\n
Cliff continued to tour late into his life, playing Glastonbury’s legends slot in 2003; and winning over a new generation of fans at the 2010 Coachella Festival.<\/p>\n
His contributions to Jamaican music and culture were recognised in October 2003 when he was awarded the country’s prestigious Order of Merit.<\/p>\n
But the singer said his connection to fans was more important than any of the other honours bestowed upon him.<\/p>\n
Speaking to US radio station NPR in 2012, he reflected: “When someone comes up to me and says, ‘I was a dropout in school and I heard your song You Can Get It If You Really Want, and that song made me go back to school, and now I am a teacher and I use your song with my students’ – that, for me, is a big success.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jimmy Cliff, one of the most prominent and beloved proponents of reggae music, has died at the age…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":151400,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[430,156,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-151399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=151399"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151399\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/151400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=151399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=151399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=151399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}