<\/p>\n
Hillel Italie<\/span> New York \u2014 Jimmy Cliff, the charismatic reggae pioneer and actor who preached joy, defiance and resilience in such classics as \u201cMany Rivers to Cross,\u201d \u201cYou Can Get it If You Really Want\u201d and \u201cVietnam\u201d and starred in the landmark movie \u201cThe Harder They Come,\u201d has died at 81.<\/p>\n His family posted a message Monday on his social media sites that he died from a \u201cseizure followed by pneumonia.\u201d Additional information was not immediately available.<\/p>\n \u201c\u201dTo all his fans around the world, please know that your support was his strength throughout his whole career,” the announcement reads in part. \u201cHe really appreciated each and every fan for their love.\u201d<\/p>\n Cliff was a native Jamaican with a spirited tenor and a gift for catchphrases and topical lyrics who joined Kingston\u2019s emerging music scene in his teens and helped lead a movement in the 1960s that included such future stars as Bob Marley, Toots Hibbert and Peter Tosh. By the early 1970s, he had accepted director Perry Henzell\u2019s offer to star in a film about an aspiring reggae musician, Ivanhoe \u201cIvan\u201d Martin, who turns to crime when his career stalls. Henzell named the movie \u201cThe Harder They Come\u201d after suggesting the title as a possible song for Cliff.<\/p>\n \u201cIvanhoe was a real-life character for Jamaicans,\u201d Cliff told Variety in 2022, upon the film\u2019s 50th anniversary. \u201cWhen 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 \u2014 an anti-hero in the way that Hollywood turns its bad guys into heroes.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe Harder They Come,\u201d delayed for some two years because of sporadic funding, was the first major commercial release to come out of Jamaica. It sold few tickets in its initial run, despite praise from Roger Ebert and other critics. But it now stands as a cultural touchstone, with a soundtrack widely cited as among the greatest ever and as a turning point in reggae\u2019s worldwide rise.<\/p>\n For a brief time, Cliff rivaled Marley as the genre\u2019s most prominent artist. On an album that included Toots and the Maytals, the Slickers and Desmond Dekker, Cliff was the featured artist on four out of 11 songs, all well placed in the reggae canon.<\/p>\n \u201cSitting in Limbo\u201d was a moody, but hopeful take on a life in restless motion. \u201cYou Can Get it If You Really Want\u201d and the title song were calls for action and vows of final payments: \u201cThe harder they come, the harder they fall, one and all.\u201d Cliff otherwise lets out a weary cry on \u201cMany Rivers to Cross,\u201d a gospel-style testament that he wrote after confronting racism in England in the 1960s.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was a very frustrating time. I came to England with very big hopes, and I saw my hopes fading,\u201d he told Rolling Stone in 2012.<\/p>\n Cliff\u2019s career peaked with \u201cThe Harder They Come,\u201d but, after a break in the late 1970s, he worked steadily for decades, whether session work with the Rolling Stones or collaborations with Wyclef Jean, Sting and Annie Lennox among others. Meanwhile, his early music lived on. The Sandinistas in Nicaragua used \u201cYou Can Get it If You Really Want\u201d as a campaign theme and Bruce Springsteen helped expand Cliff\u2019s U.S. audience with his live cover of the reggae star\u2019s \u201cTrapped,\u201d featured on the million-selling charity album from 1985, \u201cWe Are the World.\u201d Others performing his songs included John Lennon, Cher and UB40.<\/p>\n Cliff was nominated for seven Grammys and won twice for best reggae album: in 1986 for \u201cCliff Hanger\u201d and in 2012 for the well-named \u201cRebirth,\u201d widely regarded as his best work in years. His other albums included the Grammy-nominated \u201cThe Power and the Glory,\u201d \u201cHumanitarian\u201d and the 2022 release \u201cRefugees.\u201d He also performed on Steve Van Zandt\u2019s protest anthem, \u201cSun City,\u201d and acted in the Robin Williams comedy \u201cClub Paradise,\u201d for which he contributed a handful of songs to the soundtrack and sang with Elvis Costello on the rocker \u201cSeven Day Weekend.\u201d<\/p>\n In 2010, Cliff was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.<\/p>\n He was born James Chambers in suburban Saint James and, like Ivan Martin in \u201cThe Harder They Come,\u201d moved to Kingston in his youth to become a musician. In the early 1960s, Jamaica was gaining its independence from Britain and the early sounds of reggae \u2014 first called ska and rocksteady \u2014 were catching on. Calling himself Jimmy Cliff, he had a handful of local hits, including \u201cKing of Kings\u201d and \u201cMiss Jamaica,\u201d and, after overcoming the kinds of barriers that upended Martin, was called on to help represent his country at the 1964 World\u2019s Fair in New York City.<\/p>\n \u201c(Reggae) is a pure music. It was born of the poorer class of people,\u201d he told Spin in 2022. \u201cIt came from the need for recognition, identity and respect.\u201d<\/p>\n His popularity grew over the second half of the 1960s, and he signed with Island Records, the world\u2019s leading reggae label. Island founder Chris Blackwell tried in vain to market him to rock audiences, but Cliff still managed to reach new listeners. He had a hit with a cover of Cat Stevens\u2019 \u201cWild World,\u201d and reached the top 10 in the UK with the uplifting \u201cWonderful World, Beautiful People.\u201d Cliff\u2019s widely heard protest chant, \u201cVietnam,\u201d was inspired in part by a friend who had served in the war and returned damaged beyond recognition.<\/p>\n His success as a recording artist and concert performer led Henzell to seek a meeting with him and flatter him into accepting the part: \u201cYou know, I think you\u2019re a better actor than singer,\u201d Cliff remembered him saying. Aware that \u201cThe Harder They Come\u201d could be a breakthrough for Jamaican cinema, he openly wished for stardom, although Cliff remained surprised by how well known he became.<\/p>\n \u201cBack in those days there were few of us African descendants who came through the cracks to get any kind of recognition,\u2032 he told The Guardian in 2021. \u201cIt 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: \u2018Wow, what\u2019s going on?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.detroitnews.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Hillel Italie \u00a0|\u00a0 Associated Press New York \u2014 Jimmy Cliff, the charismatic reggae pioneer and actor who preached joy, defiance and resilience in such classics as \u201cMany Rivers to Cross,\u201d \u201cYou Can Get it If You Really Want\u201d and \u201cVietnam\u201d and starred in the landmark movie \u201cThe Harder They Come,\u201d has died at 81. His […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2176173,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25173],"tags":[39915,22220,21751,239390,365553,304719,305429,344542,345533,6297,21741,21993,309640,387988,21739,298114,22020,241909,21912,21800,211924,21738,239343,239453,147314,355368,305423,239344,28927,311953],"class_list":["post-2176172","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artists","tag-affiliate","tag-arts","tag-celebrities","tag-celebrities-u0026-entertainment-news","tag-cliff","tag-death","tag-death-u0026-tragedy","tag-drama","tag-drama-films","tag-eamotion","tag-entertainment","tag-films","tag-jimmy","tag-jimmy-cliff","tag-local","tag-local-affiliate-arts-u0026-entertainment","tag-movie","tag-movie-reference","tag-movies","tag-music","tag-neutral","tag-news","tag-overall","tag-overall-neutral","tag-reference","tag-reggae","tag-tragedy","tag-u0026","tag-world","tag-world-music"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Jimmy-Cliff-reggae-giant-and-star-of-landmark-film-The.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2176172","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2176172"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2176172\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2176174,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2176172\/revisions\/2176174"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2176173"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2176172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2176172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2176172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n\u00a0|\u00a0 Associated Press<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\nThe music lives on<\/h2>\n
Approaching stardom<\/h2>\n