Jimmy Cliff stays 'rock steady'

Reggae superstars are often granted a mythic status after they die - but Jimmy Cliff has managed to earn this celebrated status while still here on earth.

The Grammy-winning singer and actor - touring to support a new album of duets with Sting, Annie Lennox, Wyclef Jean, and the late Joe Strummer - is revered as one of the last remaining links to the Bob Marley era and a living personification of its enduring spirit.

"You know, the great thing about reggae is that it is an evolving musical form," says Cliff, speaking by phone from a tour stop in Paris. "Before, it was just Jamaican music. Then the first name that it had was 'ska,' and then from 'ska' it went on to become 'rock steady.' From 'rock steady' it became reggae and then the name stuck.... What I love is the evolution of it."

Cliff's latest release, "Black Magic" (Artemis Records), was produced by Dave Stewart of Eurythmics and includes elements of rap, R&B, and hip-hop, adding a contemporary sound to Cliff's familiar island lilt.

"I call the album 'Black Magic' because it was like magic how everyone came together to record it," says Cliff. "I never set out to make an album of duets. It's just that people heard Jimmy Cliff was doing an album and gravitated to it. They all said, 'Hey, let's do a song together!' "

While many aging singers take their voices down an octave to avoid shredding the high notes, Cliff can still reach the sonic peaks of his younger days. Indeed, his intact vocal range and intense stage presence show that like Neil Young or Carlos Santana, Cliff is not a time-capsule curiosity but a legitimate musical force whose talent has not diminished.

"I love what we did yesterday but I'm not 'Yesterday Man,' and I'm not 'Johnny Come Lately,' " says Cliff. "I live with the time. I have been a creative artist and that's what I am."

His passion for performing was ignited more than 40 years ago when he was still James Chambers, an elementary school student in Kingston. "I started out as an actor in a school play, and one day when I was singing, some girls heard me and said they thought it was the radio. That was when I discovered that I had a voice.

I was rehearsing for the role of King Sugar in a play about when sugar was king in the Caribbean. I still remember my lines: 'I am monarch of all I survey/ My right there is none to dispute/ From the center all around to the sea/ I am lord of the West Indies!'" says Cliff with a laugh.

The ambition to be an international sensation is something Cliff shared with Ivan, the character he played in the 1973 film "The Harder They Come," a semiautobiographical story of a young musician's hardships that lead to a life of crime. That Jamaican film predated Bob Marley's superstardom and laid the groundwork for Marley's global popularity.

" 'The Harder They Come' was a movie without borders and it definitely helped break reggae into a wider market outside the Caribbean," says Cristy Barber, president of Bob Marley's own Tuff Gong record label, a subsidiary of Island Records. "When it first came out, the Vietnam War had ended and people in America were eager for something that was more than just protest music. They were looking for something to provide a little warmth and guidance - some 'positivity' and hope - and that's what 'The Harder They Come' did."

Cliff agrees: "It was a universal story, you know? The character I played could have been an Indian boy in Delhi or a Jewish boy in Jerusalem. And it came out at a time when it really captured the spirit and the energy in the universe. That's why it made the impact that it did."

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