Living history: Jimmy Cliff

Living history

Osheaga: Jimmy Cliff

http://www.hour.ca/music/music.aspx?iIDArticle=20203

July 29th, 2010
Richard Burnett

Reggae pioneer Jimmy Cliff brings old soul to Osheaga generation

Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame inductee Jimmy Cliff became reggae's first
international star thanks to his lead role in the 1972 movie The
Harder They Come. That cult film sympathetically chronicled the rise
and fall of a gangster dope dealer in Kingston, a narrative with many
similarities to real-life alleged drug kingpin Christopher Coke. "The
film did have an influence on gun violence in Jamaica," Cliff
recently admitted. "That's very hard for me."

Still, Cliff is still working on a sequel. "The rights are cleared up
now, we don't want to do a remake and I want to be in it
acting-wise," Cliff told Hour over the phone from his Paris home.
("Oui, je parle français!")

Cliff, 62, was raised in the Somerton district of St-James, Jamaica,
and realized as a child that he had a golden voice. "I used to sing
at a church where they were serious Christians and they said, 'This
boy has a good voice,'" says Cliff, who today is neither a Christian
nor a Rasta - he's a Muslim. At 14 he marched into aspiring record
producer Leslie Kong's local ice cream parlour and sang an a cappella
tune he had written called Dearest Beverly. Kong paid him to record
it, along with Cliff's first hit, Hurricane Hattie.

"I remember that night I walked into that parlour. [Kong] wasn't in
the music business at the time, so I encouraged him to get into it!"

Over the next four decades, Cliff - on his first North American tour
in five years and whose new album, Existence, is his first since
2004's Black Magic - would record a string of classic songs,
including Vietnam, which Bob Dylan says is the greatest anti-war song
ever written.

"I still perform it today but now I call it Afghanistan," says Cliff,
thrilled that his music has reached yet another generation, like the
young indie rockers at Osheaga. "I love that, I love that! It makes
my blood flow!"

Jimmy Cliff
At Osheaga, July 31

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