Viva Lewes Issue #154 July 2019

ON THIS MONTH: FESTIVAL
Photo by Tom Sheehan
Jimmy Cliff
Music was my weapon
“I remember when I first came to the US, and
they said ‘what sort of music do you play?’ and
I’d say ‘reggae’ and they’d say ‘Reggie? Who’s
Reggie?’”
I’m talking, down the phone, to Jimmy Cliff, the
Jamaican singer-songwriter who can justifiably
claim to have been a key force in making that
Caribbean island’s main musical export go
internationally mainstream.
“People like Desmond Dekker, Millie Small
and Ansell Collins had had hit records in the
UK and in the US, but it was a movie that really
made people think ‘ooh, reggae’.”
The movie in question, Perry Henzell’s The
Harder They Come, starred Cliff as a wannabe
musician in contemporary (early 70s) Jamaica
who turns to crime after becoming disillusioned
with the corruption of the music industry, and
ends up on the run after killing a cop.
Cliff wrote the title song for the movie,
and contributed a couple of other songs to a
soundtrack that became a hit album either side
of the Atlantic. The Harder They Come was the
first of a string of international hits that have
made him into the household name he is now,
including the self-penned Many Rivers to Cross,
You Can Get It If You Really Want, and Wonderful
World, Beautiful People, as well as his Cat Stevens
cover Wild World.
“Even if I had success before as a singersongwriter,”
he continues, “it was that movie
that catapulted me… and reggae music… into
the global eye… People could see where the
music was coming from, the culture that goes
with the music, that is Rastafari.”
I ask him how come such a small island is
responsible for such an inordinately influential
music scene. “I attribute that energy to this:
Jamaica is a little piece of Atlantis, that broke off
Atlantis when it snapped, and therefore the sun
hits Jamaica at a different angle, and that’s what
gives us that energy, for all that we have given to
the world.”
Another Jamaican export we discuss is the
notion of the ‘rude boy’, assimilated into British
culture in the Two-Tone cultural explosion,
led by The Specials, in the late 70s. Cliff also
reckons ‘rude boy’ culture to be the genesis of
the punk explosion in the UK. He explains: “the
rude boy is the one who rebelled against the
system in Jamaica. In the era of the rude boy in
Jamaica there was a bit of violence, too. I mean
they carried knives. But they were frustrated
because they couldn’t get a job, and they
couldn’t fit in, and it led to violence.”
So, I wonder, to conclude our brief chat: is
Jimmy Cliff a rude boy? “I was someone
who rebelled against the system, just like the
character I played [in the film]. And in that
sense, I was a rude boy, but I wasn’t a violent
person. Was music my weapon? Absolutely, yes.”
Alex Leith
Jimmy appears at the Love Supreme festival,
Glynde Place, July 5th-7th
37