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Jimmy Cliff, the legendary Jamaican singer who along with Bob Marley popularised reggae, ska and rocksteady music over a six-decade career, died died in Kingston on Sunday aged 81. The cause was a seizure followed by pneumonia.

Born James Chambers on July 30, 1944, during a hurricane in St James Parish, Jamaica, he moved in the 1950s from the family farm to the country’s capital Kingston with his father, determined to succeed in the music industry. At just 14 he became nationally famous for the song ‘Hurricane Hattie’, which he wrote.

Cliff would go on to record over 30 albums and perform all over the world, including in Paris, Brazil and at the World Fair, an international exhibition held in New York in 1964.

The following year, Island Records’ Chris Blackwell, the producer who launched Bob Marley and the Wailers, invited Cliff to work with him in Britain.

Cliff later went into acting, starring in the 1972 classic film The Harder They Come, directed by Perry Henzell, which introduced an international audience to reggae music. The movie portrayed the grittier aspects of Jamaican life, redefining the island as more than a tourist playground of cocktails, beaches and waterfalls.

“When I’ve achieved all my ambitions, then I guess that I will have done it and I can just say ‘great’,” he said in a 2019 interview, as he was losing his sight.

Known in part for singles ‘You Can Get It If You Really Want It’ and ‘Many Rivers To Cross’, as well as for his covers of Johnny Nash’s ‘I Can See Clearly Now’, which appeared on the soundtrack of the 1993 movie, Cool Runnings, and Cat Stevens’ ‘Wild World’, Cliff was a prolific writer who weaved his humanitarian views into his songs.

Originally published in Dawn, November 25th, 2025