{"id":113209,"date":"2025-11-24T20:32:59","date_gmt":"2025-11-24T18:32:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/zimbabwe\/all-news\/jimmy-cliff-jamaican-reggae-legend-dies-at-81"},"modified":"2025-11-24T23:52:39","modified_gmt":"2025-11-24T21:52:39","slug":"jimmy-cliff-jamaican-reggae-legend-dies-at-81","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/zimbabwe\/all-news\/jimmy-cliff-jamaican-reggae-legend-dies-at-81","title":{"rendered":"Jimmy Cliff Jamaican Reggae Legend Dies at 81"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #ff6600\"><strong>Africa-Press &#8211; Zimbabwe. <\/strong><\/span>Jimmy Cliff, the singer and actor whose mellifluous voice helped to turn reggae into a global phenomenon, has died aged 81.<\/p>\n<p>A message from his wife Latifa Chambers on Instagram reads: \u201cIt\u2019s with profound sadness that I share that my husband, Jimmy Cliff, has crossed over due to a seizure followed by pneumonia. 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&#8230; Jimmy, my darling, may you rest in peace. I will follow your wishes.\u201d Her message was also signed by their children, Lilty and Aken.<\/p>\n<p>With hits including You Can Get It If You Really Want, I Can See Clearly Now and Wonderful World, Beautiful People, Cliff\u2019s upbeat musical temperament brought him a large and longstanding fanbase. His lead acting role in 1972 crime drama The Harder They Come was also acclaimed, with the film seen as a cornerstone of Jamaican cinema.<\/p>\n<p>He is one of just a handful of musicians, alongside Bob Marley and others, to be awarded the Jamaican Order of Merit.<\/p>\n<p>Jamaican prime minister Andrew Holness was among those paying tribute to Cliff, calling him \u201ca true cultural giant whose music carried the heart of our nation to the world&#8230; Jimmy Cliff told our story with honesty and soul. His music lifted people through hard times, inspired generations, and helped to shape the global respect that Jamaican culture enjoys today.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Cliff was born in Saint James, Jamaica in 1944, and his music career began in the early 1960s after he moved to the island\u2019s capital Kingston and began collaborating with producer Leslie Kong. Kong\u2019s family owned a record shop called Beverley\u2019s and Cliff wrote a song namechecking it to help persuade Kong \u2013 who would go on to become key producer in reggae \u2013 to work with him. He had a number of local hits and was selected as a Jamaican representative at the World\u2019s Fair expo in New York in 1964, but his career really took off later that decade after he signed to Island Records.<\/p>\n<p>He was initially marketed to a rock crowd \u2013 hence curios such as his cover of Whiter Shade of Pale \u2013 and found life in his new home of London alienating, later describing the city as \u201ca bitch&#8230; I experienced racism in a manner I had never experienced before\u201d. But the sparkling ska of 1969\u2019s Wonderful World, Beautiful People proved to be his breakthrough UK hit, reaching No 6 in the charts.<\/p>\n<p>Its message of hope and unity carried with it a rebuke of the current state of the world (\u201ccheating, backbiting, scandalising and hating\u201d) and that blend of beautiful music and socially conscious lyrics became a core part of Cliff\u2019s artistry. After writing Vietnam, a song pleading for the end to that war, Cliff later recalled: \u201cThe critics in London said, \u2018Wow! How is he singing this kind of serious song and such a happy rhythm?\u2019 And I said: Wow! I didn\u2019t even realise I was doing that. I was just writing a song to a rhythm.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Cliff was back in the UK Top 10 in 1970 with a cover of Cat Stevens\u2019s Wild World, before filming The Harder They Come in 1972, after the film\u2019s director Perry Henzell intuited that he would make a good actor.<\/p>\n<p>Its soundtrack album, with Cliff performances such as the title track and You Can Get It If You Really Want alongside others by Desmond Dekker, Toots &amp; the Maytals and more, helped to bring reggae to a wider audience, especially in the US where the film was eventually released in 1975.<\/p>\n<p>The film\u2019s gangster milieu was familiar to Cliff, as he recalled in the Observer in 2022: \u201cWhen I came to Kingston I lived in areas that were gangster-infested, and to be quite honest, the only thing that stopped me from joining those gangs full-time was I didn\u2019t know where I would bury my head if my family heard that I was in Kingston firing a gun.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Cliff continued to tour and release albums in the 1970s, and had high-profile appearances in the US such as a booking on Saturday Night Live. He took some time away from music in the mid-late 1970s, travelling to Africa to reconnect with his ancestral roots, and converting to Islam: the 1978 album Give Thankx was partly inspired by those travels.<\/p>\n<p>Bruce Springsteen championed his song Trapped by playing it on tour in the early 1980s, and a live version appeared on the massive-selling charity album We Are the World.<\/p>\n<p>In 1994, he had a huge flush of new fame with his version of I Can See Clearly Now, which appeared on the soundtrack to the Jamaican bobsled drama film Cool Runnings: it returned him to the UK Top 40 for the first time since 1970, topped the French charts and was a hit elsewhere.<\/p>\n<p>Cliff collaborated with numerous other artists over the years from the Rolling Stones to Sting. More recently he worked with the lead singer of punk band Rancid, Tim Armstrong, on an EP and album, the latter winning a Grammy for best reggae album \u2013 one of two wins from seven nominations over the years.<\/p>\n<p>Cliff\u2019s most recent album is 2022\u2019s Refugees, made with Wyclef Jean, capping a discography of more than 30 studio albums.<\/p>\n<p>Despite the success of The Harder They Come, Cliff only occasionally returned to acting, most prominently with 1986\u2019s Club Paradise, opposite Robin Williams, Rick Moranis and more.<\/p>\n<p><strong>For More News And Analysis About <span style=\"color: #ff6600\">Zimbabwe<\/span> Follow <span style=\"color: #ff6600\">Africa-Press<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Africa-Press &#8211; Zimbabwe. Jimmy Cliff, the singer and actor whose mellifluous voice helped to turn reggae into a global phenomenon, has died aged 81. A message from his wife Latifa Chambers on Instagram reads: \u201cIt\u2019s with profound sadness that I share that my husband, Jimmy Cliff, has crossed over due to a seizure followed by [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":113208,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,5],"tags":[19],"class_list":["post-113209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-news","category-culture-and-art","tag-zimbabwe"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.1 (Yoast SEO v27.0) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Jimmy Cliff Jamaican Reggae Legend Dies at 81 - zimbabwe<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Jimmy Cliff, the singer and actor whose mellifluous voice helped to turn reggae into a global phenomenon, has died aged ...\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/zimbabwe\/all-news\/jimmy-cliff-jamaican-reggae-legend-dies-at-81\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Jimmy Cliff Jamaican Reggae Legend Dies at 81\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Jimmy Cliff, the singer and actor whose mellifluous voice helped to turn reggae into a global phenomenon, has died aged ...\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/zimbabwe\/all-news\/jimmy-cliff-jamaican-reggae-legend-dies-at-81\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"zimbabwe\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2025-11-24T18:32:59+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2025-11-24T21:52:39+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/static.africa-press.net\/zimbabwe\/sites\/14\/2025\/11\/sm_1764008548.185089.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"880\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"660\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"cfeditoren\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"cfeditoren\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/zimbabwe\/all-news\/jimmy-cliff-jamaican-reggae-legend-dies-at-81#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/zimbabwe\/all-news\/jimmy-cliff-jamaican-reggae-legend-dies-at-81\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"cfeditoren\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/zimbabwe\/#\/schema\/person\/068c7ab4e9634ae78ec5d54ec46598bb\"},\"headline\":\"Jimmy Cliff Jamaican Reggae Legend Dies at 81\",\"datePublished\":\"2025-11-24T18:32:59+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2025-11-24T21:52:39+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/zimbabwe\/all-news\/jimmy-cliff-jamaican-reggae-legend-dies-at-81\"},\"wordCount\":941,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/zimbabwe\/all-news\/jimmy-cliff-jamaican-reggae-legend-dies-at-81#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/static.africa-press.net\/zimbabwe\/sites\/14\/2025\/11\/sm_1764008548.185089.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"Zimbabwe\"],\"articleSection\":[\"all news\",\"culture and art\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/zimbabwe\/all-news\/jimmy-cliff-jamaican-reggae-legend-dies-at-81#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/zimbabwe\/all-news\/jimmy-cliff-jamaican-reggae-legend-dies-at-81\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/zimbabwe\/all-news\/jimmy-cliff-jamaican-reggae-legend-dies-at-81\",\"name\":\"Jimmy Cliff Jamaican Reggae Legend Dies at 81 - 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