The musician on his early struggles in London, the enduring appeal of his song Many Rivers to Cross, auditioning Bob Marley, and the problem with Jamaican independence
One of the great pioneers of reggae, Jimmy Cliff was born in Jamaica in 1944 as James Chambers, and started writing songs while in primary school. He moved to Kingston as a teenager to pursue music and had his first hit at 14 with Hurricane Hattie. After stints in New York and London he returned to Jamaica and played the lead role in the 1972 film The Harder They Come, whose soundtrack (featuring four of Cliff’s songs) helped popularise reggae around the world. The film has just been rereleased for its 50th anniversary, and Cliff’s latest album, Refugees, his first in a decade, is out now on UMe.
You tackle some weighty subjects on your new album – racism, money lust, the refugee crisis. Was that your motivation for making it: to speak out on these issues?
No, I wanted to make it because I wanted to make new music. And along the way these songs were inspired. A lot of the way I write is: I talk lyrics into my phone. Then I listen back and think: ‘Wow, this sounds good, and this is a relevant song for the time, I had no idea!’ So it came like that, and that’s a happy feeling.
