By HILLEL ITALIE | Related Press
NEW YORK (AP) — Jimmy Cliff, the charismatic reggae pioneer and actor who preached pleasure, defiance and resilience in such classics as “Many Rivers to Cross,” “You Can Get it If You Really Want” and “Vietnam” and starred within the landmark film “The Harder They Come,” has died at 81.
His household posted a message Monday on his social media websites that he died from a “seizure followed by pneumonia.” Extra data was not instantly obtainable.
“”To all his followers around the globe, please know that your assist was his energy all through his complete profession,” the announcement reads partially. “He really appreciated each and every fan for their love.”
Cliff was a local Jamaican with a spirited tenor and a present for catchphrases and topical lyrics who joined Kingston’s rising music scene in his teenagers and helped lead a motion within the Sixties that included such future stars as Bob Marley, Toots Hibbert and Peter Tosh. By the early Nineteen Seventies, he had accepted director Perry Henzell’s supply to star in a movie about an aspiring reggae musician, Ivanhoe “Ivan” Martin, who turns to crime when his profession stalls. Henzell named the film “The Harder They Come” after suggesting the title as a doable tune for Cliff.
“Ivanhoe was a real-life character for Jamaicans,” Cliff informed Selection in 2022, upon the movie’s fiftieth anniversary. “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 wanted to make his name — an anti-hero in the way that Hollywood turns its bad guys into heroes.”
“The Harder They Come,” delayed for some two years due to sporadic funding, was the primary main business launch to come back out of Jamaica. It bought few tickets in its preliminary run, regardless of reward from Roger Ebert and different critics. However it now stands as a cultural touchstone, with a soundtrack extensively cited as among the many biggest ever and as a turning level in reggae’s worldwide rise.
For a quick time, Cliff rivaled Marley because the style’s most outstanding artist. On an album that included Toots and the Maytals, the Slickers and Desmond Dekker, Cliff was the featured artist on 4 out of 11 songs, all properly positioned within the reggae canon.
“Sitting in Limbo” was a moody, however hopeful tackle a life in stressed movement. “You Can Get it If You Really Want” and the title tune had been requires motion and vows of ultimate funds: “The harder they come, the harder they fall, one and all.” Cliff in any other case lets out a weary cry on “Many Rivers to Cross,” a gospel-style testomony that he wrote after confronting racism in England within the Sixties.
“It was a very frustrating time. I came to England with very big hopes, and I saw my hopes fading,” he informed Rolling Stone in 2012.
The music lives on
Cliff’s profession peaked with “The Harder They Come,” however, after a break within the late Nineteen Seventies, he labored steadily for many years, whether or not session work with the Rolling Stones or collaborations with Wyclef Jean, Sting and Annie Lennox amongst others. In the meantime, his early music lived on. The Sandinistas in Nicaragua used “You Can Get it If You Really Want” as a marketing campaign theme and Bruce Springsteen helped develop Cliff’s U.S. viewers together with his reside cowl of the reggae star’s “Trapped,” featured on the million-selling charity album from 1985, “We Are the World.” Others performing his songs included John Lennon, Cher and UB40.
Cliff was nominated for seven Grammys and received twice for finest reggae album: in 1986 for “Cliff Hanger” and in 2012 for the well-named “Rebirth,” extensively thought to be his finest work in years. His different albums included the Grammy-nominated “The Power and the Glory,” “Humanitarian” and the 2022 launch “Refugees.” He additionally carried out on Steve Van Zandt’s protest anthem, “Sun City,” and acted within the Robin Williams comedy “Club Paradise,” for which he contributed a handful of songs to the soundtrack and sang with Elvis Costello on the rocker “Seven Day Weekend.”
In 2010, Cliff was inducted into the Rock and Roll Corridor of Fame.
He was born James Chambers in suburban Saint James and, like Ivan Martin in “The Harder They Come,” moved to Kingston in his youth to change into a musician. Within the early Sixties, Jamaica was gaining its independence from Britain and the early sounds of reggae — first referred to as ska and rocksteady — had been catching on. Calling himself Jimmy Cliff, he had a handful of native hits, together with “King of Kings” and “Miss Jamaica,” and, after overcoming the sorts of limitations that upended Martin, was referred to as on to assist signify his nation on the 1964 World’s Truthful in New York Metropolis.
“(Reggae) is a pure music. It was born of the poorer class of people,” he informed Spin in 2022. “It came from the need for recognition, identity and respect.”
Approaching stardom
His reputation grew over the second half of the Sixties, and he signed with Island Information, the world’s main reggae label. Island founder Chris Blackwell tried in useless to market him to rock audiences, however Cliff nonetheless managed to achieve new listeners. He had successful with a canopy of Cat Stevens’ “Wild World,” and reached the highest 10 within the UK with the uplifting “Wonderful World, Beautiful People.” Cliff’s extensively heard protest chant, “Vietnam,” was impressed partially by a pal who had served within the warfare and returned broken past recognition.
His success as a recording artist and live performance performer led Henzell to hunt a gathering with him and flatter him into accepting the half: “You know, I think you’re a better actor than singer,” Cliff remembered him saying. Conscious that “The Harder They Come” may very well be a breakthrough for Jamaican cinema, he brazenly wished for stardom, though Cliff remained shocked by how well-known he turned.
“Back in those days there were few of us African descendants who came through the cracks to get any kind of recognition,′ he told The Guardian in 2021. “It was easier in music than movies. But when you start to see your face and name on the side of the buses in London that was like: ‘Wow, what’s going on?’”
