The Left-Handed Guitar Players That Changed Music By John Engel
JIMMY CLIFF


guitar
Plays Guitar Left Handed Upside/Down.


JIMMY CLIFF
Jamaica’s premier musical ambassador, Jimmy Cliff began to make his crystalline voice and timeless, shimmering songs known to the world in the 1960s. But it was probably through his timeless tracks and starring role in the seminal 1972 Jamaican movie, The Harder They Come, that his music gradually conquered the planet’s airwaves. His enduring songs have been covered by many other topnotch artists, including Joe Cocker, UB40, Bruce Springsteen, Linda Ronstadt, and Keith Richards.

A true icon of reggae and pop music, Cliff has penned some of the most memorable songs ever to emerge from the island. He has received support from some major musical celebrities in recent years, from Elton John to Annie Lennox and Sting, and has enjoyed notable success in the U.S. since the turn of the millennium. Notwithstanding the fact that he has been an enormous star on other continents, why was an artist of Jimmy Cliff’s importance and prolific output mainly ignored in North America, and to a lesser extent Europe, for so long?

Some have criticized Cliff for trying to please too wide an audience, embracing too many styles at once, thereby diluting the very form that he helped popularize in the first place. There have been recordings that fueled that view, not least the soul-only album Another Cycle in 1971. Yet, as other maverick artists that pursue their own star and fashion hybrid aesthetics, Jimmy Cliff has been a daring trailblazer. He was the first Jamaican singer-songwriter to achieve worldwide international success; the first to star in a movie and contribute songs to it; the first to take reggae to Africa and Latin America; the first to mix not only contemporary American R&B, but also indigenous African music with reggae. He is not only an icon of reggae music but also a precursor of the so-called world music craze that began to enthuse the Western market in the mid-1980s.

His songs can be so seemingly simple and easy to hum, one may forget that it is precisely his talent for distilling such songs and producing them in a pleasing and tasteful medley of cultures that makes him so distinctive. Moreover, this harmonious mix purposefully hinges on the common bond shared by all black music. To these traits, add his crystal-clear, high tenor and his life-affirming lyrics, and you get a more lucid portrait of this important, universal musical artist, whose legacy stands on far more than a collection of unforgettable songs.

© LFV / John Engel all rights reserved.

Read about Jimmy Cliff's amazing life and music in John Engel's Uncommon Sound book.