Jimmy Cliff, the Jamaican singer who was instrumental in taking reggae international, has died. Cliff’s spouse, Latifa Chambers, and his household introduced the information in a put up on the singer’s social media pages, giving the trigger as a seizure adopted by pneumonia. Cliff was 81 years outdated.
Born James Chambers, Jimmy Cliff was a star of stage and display screen, as well-known for his function within the revolutionary cult movie The Tougher They Come as for his export of ska and reggae music throughout the Atlantic and again to North America. His breakout in late Nineteen Sixties London adopted a decided rise out of poverty in Jamaica, the place he had graduated from taking part in Elvis Presley covers in singing contests to releasing a string of ska hits that helped the style, fueled by the introduction of the electrical bass guitar, create a party-starting fervor in Kingston.
That native success prompted a teenage Cliff’s signing to Britain’s fledgling Island Information. Upon arriving in Britain, nevertheless, Cliff “discovered folks had been not likely into reggae music,” as he advised Vivien Goldman in 1979. “They had been extra into American R&B, so I began to mix the 2.” That fusion got here to bear on his first two albums, launched by Island: 1967’s Arduous Highway to Journey and his self-titled 1969 LP. The latter album spawned a UK High 10 single in “Fantastic World, Lovely Individuals” (which lent its title to later pressings of the album), in addition to “Vietnam,” which Bob Dylan is alleged to have referred to as “the most effective protest track ever written.”
As Cliff rose within the public eye, Jamaica was in a interval of social upheaval, with reggae as its soundtrack. Cliff cheered his working-class compatriots from afar, later telling the author Lloyd Bradley in Bass Tradition: When Reggae Was King that the will for political change had compelled rude-boy tradition to evolve right into a search “for one thing deeper” after independence. He went on, “As they began wanting in direction of our personal tradition—like the federal government had been encouraging folks to do—that led them to look extra in direction of Africa and a few kind of Black consciousness. That’s what the roots motion was all about.… Since issues had been getting unhealthy for fairly a couple of years, they stepped up their struggle to be heard and it was the musicians that present that voice for them.”
Cliff returned to his native nation, in 1969, the place he quickly swaggered into the lead function in The Tougher They Come, director Perry Henzell’s electrifying drama about post-colonial Kingston youth. The primary home made function produced in impartial Jamaica, the 1972 launch was a slow-burning word-of-mouth sensation, as was Cliff’s soundtrack. The album’s mixture of reggae requirements and Cliff originals quickly accelerated the Seventies roots reggae growth, minting Cliff a famous person and setting the stage for Bob Marley—whom Cliff had given an early break in Kingston—and his major-label debut with the Wailers, Catch a Hearth, quickly after.
