\n
Minister of Culture, Gender, Entertainment and Sport, Olivia Grange, says that the farewell to reggae singer Jimmy Cliff, scheduled for this Wednesday at the National Indoor Sports Centre, will be an \u201cofficial celebration of a well-lived life and would feature the music for which Jimmy was known and to which he dedicated his life\u201d.<\/p>\n
Headlines across traditional and social media have labelled the event \u201can official funeral\u201d rather than a celebration of life.<\/p>\n
Minister Grange said in a press release that the celebration of Jimmy Cliff\u2019s life will not be a typical service that is held after a person\u2019s passing.<\/p>\n
\u201cJimmy didn\u2019t want a sad or sombre occasion, he wanted a celebration of his life and we are honouring his memory and his wishes,\u201d Grange said.<\/p>\n
The Official Celebration for the life of Jimmy Cliff will take place on Wednesday, December 17, beginning at 3 p.m., instead of 10 a.m. as was previously announced.<\/p>\n
Minister Grange said the celebration will feature \u201cperformances of about 20 of Jimmy Cliff\u2019s songs by leading members of the entertainment industry\u201d, including Dwight Richards, Tessanne Chin, Nadine Sutherland, Beenie Man, Alaine, Duane Stephenson, and the icon\u2019s daughter, Lilty Cliff.<\/p>\n
Tributes are to be made by officials of state, including the Prime Minister, Dr Andrew Holness. Ziggy Marley and Shaggy will be among those making tributes via video.<\/p>\n
Minister Grange said members of the public should \u201ccome prepared to celebrate the life and enduring impact of Jimmy Cliff on Jamaica as well as culture and entertainment\u201d.<\/p>\n
A post made on Jimmy Cliff\u2019s official Instagram account five days ago stated,\u201dWe are grateful to the Jamaican government for Celebrating the Life of Jimmy Cliff on the 17th of December 2025 in Kingston at the National Indoor Sports Center. See you there.\u201d<\/p>\n
No mention was made of a date for a funeral.<\/p>\n
During a tribute in the House of Representatives on Tuesday November 25, it was announced that the Government had accorded an official funeral to musical icon James \u2018Jimmy Cliff\u2019 Chambers. It was also revealed at the time that he had left \u201cspecific instructions about how he wants Jamaica to say farewell to him\u201d.<\/p>\n
The Grammy Award-winning, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee passed away on Monday, November 24. He was 81.<\/p>\n
entertainment@gleanerjm.com<\/a><\/i> <\/p>\n<\/p><\/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 jamaica-gleaner.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Minister of Culture, Gender, Entertainment and Sport, Olivia Grange, says that the farewell to reggae singer Jimmy Cliff, scheduled for this Wednesday at the National Indoor Sports Centre, will be an \u201cofficial celebration of a well-lived life and would feature the music for which Jimmy was known and to which he dedicated his life\u201d. Headlines […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2199247,"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":[25172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2199246","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Farewell-for-Jimmy-Cliff-an-Official-Celebration-of-his-life.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2199246","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=2199246"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2199246\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2199248,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2199246\/revisions\/2199248"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2199247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2199246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2199246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2199246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}