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 has announced on Facebook. He was 81.
The cause was a seizure followed by pneumonia, Latifa Chambers said.
Born James Chambers on 30 July, 1944 during a hurricane in St James Parish, northwestern Jamaica, Cliff 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' Chris Blackwell, the producer who launched Bob Marley and the Wailers, invited Cliff to work in the UK 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 for the 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 film 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 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 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 Tim Armstrong of the punk band Rancid, 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.
Source: Reuters
