At a time when reggae’s remaining legends are fewer and farther between, Jimmy Cliff happily seemed like an undying force—the singer with the heavenly lilting voice, the forever-rocksteady pulse, and the charismatic gangster lean who put the Jamaican-born-and-branded music on the map internationally with the chilling, villain soundtrack to 1972’s The Harder They Come. Before Cliff, the music of Jamaica was quaint and cheerful (save for ska), the stuff of Harry Belafonte records and island dreams. Now, however, in the guise of Ivanhoe—the angel with the dirty face in The Harder They Come—reggae got a sturdier sound, more fluid rhythms, a social conscience (his early hit “Wonderful World, Beautiful People”), a protest paean (Dylan named 1970’s “Vietnam” the best protest song he’d ever heard), and a pretty face.
If not for the star shine and power of Cliff, the careers and aesthetics of—and the powerful, near-religious imagery given—Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, Lee “Scratch” Perry, Augustus Pablo, Gregory Isaacs, and other valued veterans of reggae don’t happen as they did. Where is the punky-reggae party that Marley and the Wailers sought out, or the on-the-run police on the back of thieves if Junior Murvin doesn’t hand them to The Clash, or even the Black and brown musical revolution that begins with Africa, Cuba, and Brazil, then flies forward from there?
Cliff, reggae’s musical and cultural ambassador, passed away this morning at the age of 81. “It’s with profound sadness that I share that my husband, Jimmy Cliff, has crossed over due to a seizure followed by pneumonia,” Cliff’s wife Latifa Chambers wrote on Instagram. “I am thankful for his family, friends, fellow artists and coworkers who have shared his journey with him. To all his fans around the world, please know that your support was his strength throughout his whole career … Jimmy, my darling, may you rest in peace. I will follow your wishes.” Cliff may have moved onto another plane, but he’s still an undying force.
It wasn’t as if Cliff’s first fame or sole stardom came from his revolutionary 1972 film. He and then-novice producer Leslie Kong woke the world to the power of reggae music that told a story with “Hurricane Hattie,” held onto religious imagery with “King of Kings,” and shared the beauty of the island paradise’s women with “Dearest Beverley” and “Miss Jamaica” before the top of 1970. No one in Jamaica was friendly to British rule, but having London hotshot Chris Blackwell and his burgeoning Island Records pick up Cliff early on meant better distribution and visibility for the hungry young vocalist. It is, then, through the international auspices of Island that Cliff hits such as “Waterfall,” “Wonderful World, Beautiful People,” “Vietnam,” and his cover of Cat Stevens's “Wild World” cascade onto the UK charts.
Still, it was the real-life lore of Cliff’s Ivanhoe that was most provocative to all audiences, as he was totemic, a hero to Jamaicans young and old, despite his having dealt marijuana and killed a policeman. “Ivanhoe was a real-life character for Jamaicans,” Cliff told me in 2024 on the occasion of the opening of a new off-Broadway musical version of The Harder They Come using his songs. “The idea of having something come hard and fall harder—you know, that resonated with me… When I was a little boy, I used to hear about him as being a bad man. A real bad man. No one in Jamaica, at that time, had guns. But he had guns and shot a policeman, so he was someone to be feared. However, being a hero was the manner in which Perry [Henzell, the film’s director] wanted to make his name—an anti-hero in the way that Hollywood turns its bad guys into heroes… I may not be a bad man. But I have known a lot of bad men.”
The visibility given to Cliff from the film and its soundtrack—in particular, his gospel-tinged ballad “Many Rivers to Cross”—made him an icon of an alluring, foreign, sinsemilla-scented music whose steam would soon rise even further by decade’s close and the additional success of a next generation of Jamaican stars such as Marley, Tosh, and Bunny Wailer. “I’ve always known that ‘Many Rivers to Cross’ was one of my best songs, and ‘You Can Get It If You Really Want’ had already been a hit for Desmond Dekker, so I knew their power,” said Cliff. “They were big songs in Jamaica, so that was a great signal. But when we played in America after the film opened for the first time, at Carnegie Hall, the experience was wild, and the theater was packed.”
Between “Many Rivers to Cross” being a Top 10 hit when covered by Linda Ronstadt and Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band turning “Trapped” into a mid-set live anthem tour after tour, the Jamaican songwriter achieved the sort of status reserved for the likes of Smokey Robinson and Stevie Wonder—artists whose best music lived far beyond their own means. And Cliff never stopped making his own storied recordings, as the 21st century alone yielded four new, original albums ending with 2022’s Refugees. “I don’t know for certain what it is that I am most proud of when it comes to my body of work, but I do know that I am really proud of The Harder They Come,” he told me. No matter how hard, Jimmy Cliff will never fall.
