Jimmy Cliff: The voice who carried a people’s longing for recognition, identity and justice

November 25, 2025 in Columnists, Editorial, Letters, Opinion by Editor

Jimmy Cliff’s music did more than entertain—it articulated the hopes, wounds, and defiance of generations seeking dignity and visibility. This tribute explores how the reggae icon’s soaring voice and revolutionary storytelling helped define a global struggle for recognition, identity, and justice, leaving a legacy that continues to resonate far beyond the stage.

Jimmy Cliff spent his life trying to explain something simple yet profound: that reggae was never just a rhythm, never just a genre, never merely a sound from a small Caribbean island that somehow conquered the world. To him, reggae was born out of necessity — a declaration of existence from people who had long been denied dignity.

“We formed this music out of the need for recognition, for identity, respect, love and justice,” he once said. Those were not abstract words for Cliff but the coordinates of his own life.

Born James Chambers into deep rural poverty in St. James, Jamaica, he grew up hearing the echoes of dispossession — the kind that leaves marks on a nation, not just an individual. Yet from those beginnings, he stitched together a voice and a worldview that would become one of the great moral and artistic forces of the 20th century.

When Cliff entered the industry, Jamaica had no reggae, no template, no global stage waiting. There was ska — fast, bright, restless — mirroring the energy of a young nation finding its post-independence footing. There was rocksteady — slower, steadier — reflecting a people exhaling after the storm of political and social upheaval.

Then came reggae: a new beat carrying an old longing, a cultural and philosophical ascent rooted deeply in Rastafari’s insistence on African consciousness, black pride, and human upliftment. Cliff didn’t just witness that evolution; he catalysed it. His early work gave reggae its emotional vocabulary, equal parts defiance and tenderness.

For Cliff, music was never entertainment alone. “The essence of my music is struggle. What gives it the icing is the hope of love,” he said. Few artists embodied this duality as naturally.

From Wonderful World, Beautiful People, which made global audiences dance even as it pleaded for decency, to Vietnam, which Bob Dylan hailed as the greatest protest song he’d ever heard, Cliff carried the conscience of a generation.

He sang about war, injustice, poverty, longing and resilience — but always with that unmistakable melodic warmth that made the listener believe that hope was still rational.

His starring role in The Harder They Come was more than a film credit. It was a cultural breakthrough, a cinematic and musical detonator that blasted Jamaican sound and struggle into international consciousness. Cliff played Ivan Martin, a young dreamer battered by a corrupt system — a mirror of countless real lives.

The film told the world where reggae came from. Cliff, through music like Many Rivers to Cross, told them why it mattered.

It is no exaggeration to say that without that film — without Cliff — reggae might have remained a regional sound instead of a global language.

Cliff’s accolades — the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Order of Merit, Grammy wins — were meaningful, but they were never the core of his legacy. That belonged to the countless people who found themselves reflected in his work.

“When we saw Jimmy Cliff, we saw ourselves,” Wyclef Jean once said. That sentiment spans continents. For decades, Cliff was a soundtrack for the marginalised, the ambitious, the spiritually searching, the people climbing their own mountains one slow, determined step at a time.

To hear You Can Get It If You Really Want was to be reminded that dreams are not an extravagance — they are a right.

With his passing at 81, the world loses more than a legendary artist. It loses a moral voice — one that sang about resistance without hatred, about identity without exclusion, about justice without despair.

We lose an elder who remembered the birth of reggae not as a commercial milestone but as a cultural awakening.
We lose a philosopher disguised as a singer.
We lose a carrier of memory — of a time when music itself was a rebellion.

Most of all, we lose the rare kind of artist who understood that every lyric could be a lifeline, every melody a shelter, every beat a declaration that a people long overlooked were, in fact, profoundly alive.

His death — from a seizure followed by pneumonia — closes a remarkable earthly journey. But it does not silence him. His songs remain global prayers for justice, identity, consciousness and dignity. They remain the sound of people rising.

Jimmy Cliff once said that Rastafari appealed to the world’s consciousness because it lifted humanity. In truth, his music did the same.

He leaves behind a world that still aches for the very recognition, respect and justice he sang into being.
And he leaves us with a simple instruction, whispered through decades:

Sing. Resist. Rise. Hope.

Jimmy Cliff has crossed over. But the movement he helped build — and the humanity he insisted we recognise — endures, steady as a reggae beat.