The story of Jimmy Cliff, who has died at age 81, is in part the story of reggae itself. Like so many Jamaican teens of his time, he moved to Kingston in the early 1960s and joined a rising musical movement that would help give voice to the country's independence from Great Britain.

Jimmy Cliff, the legendary Jamaican singer who along with Bob Marley popularized reggae, ska and rocksteady music over a six decade career, has died, his wife Latifa Chambers announced on Facebook on ...

By the early 1970s, he had accepted director Perry Henzell’s offer to star in a film about an aspiring reggae musician, Ivanhoe “Ivan” Martin, who turns to crime when his career stalls.