Jimmy Cliff 1944 – 2025
Legendary (and I don’t use that word lightly) Jamaican reggae singer and actor, Jimmy Cliff died yesterday. For those of us who are first generation Black and mixed race British, whose parents were immigrants from the Caribbean and Africa, this is profoundly sad news. His music was the soundtrack of my and my siblings early lifes and will always be associated with happy memories of family and later, my young adult life. While Jimmy Cliff brought Reggae music into the mainstream way before Bob Marley, he shouldn’t be pigeonholed as just a reggae “singer” he was so much more.
He didn’t just cover other peoples songs as other Reggae artists do, he was a prolific songwriter and very socially conscious, which is very evident in the words to “Vietnam”, a song he wrote about a friend who returned unrecognisable from the Vietnam war. Bob Dylan considered Jimmy Cliffs “Vietnam” to be the greatest protest song and Bob knows a thing or two about protest songs.
The out pouring from other artists across the genres has been breathtaking and heart warming. May he rest in peace. 🕊️
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