In 1968, four years before he would star in the movie, "The Harder They Come," and four years before Bob Marley would release an album outside Jamaica, Jimmy Cliff scored a top-10 U.K. single with "Wonderful World, Beautiful People." That single anchored the Jamaican...

JIMMY CLIFF & ONENESS At: Venus de Milo on Sunday night Can you book a more low-profile gig than this one? Reggae star Jimmy Cliff, whose shows are normally accompanied by fanfare befitting his regal standing, virtually snuck into Venus de Milo...

Today is Palm Sunday, April 1, the 91st day of 2007. There are 274 days left in the year. This is April Fool's Day.Today's Highlight in History:On April 1, 1945, American forces invaded Okinawa, Japan, during World War II.On this date:In 1853, Cincinnati established a...

Reggae's birth is tied to American R&B;, which started hitting the island via radio and records in the 1950s. The music was usually spread via huge sound systems and things started rolling when rival DJs Duke Reid and Clement "Coxsone" Dodd took the music to...

Jimmy Cliff is an artist to be watched. If you haven't seen The Harder They Come, starring Cliff in the first feature film made in and about Jamaica, do. Cliff wrote and sings five of the film's songs and they are stunners, embodying the kinky persona he projects in his role as a street singer who asks too many questions and wants the world to shake ass when he makes music…. [His] lyrics combine a touching sincerity with the arrogance of youth. He left me lost on the last notes of his p...

Put the needle on Jimmy Cliff's Unlimited and the grooves writhe like a poised snake, the record grows hot with anger, and the air fills with the pungent smell of despair…. The songs are almost all about exploitation, of Jamaica, its music and Jimmy himself. "You stole my history, destroyed my culture," he accuses in "The Price of Peace," you "cut off my tongue so I can't communicate … hide my whole of life so myself I should hate." The s...

Jimmy Cliff's dilemma, more than amply illustrated by this well-planned double album ["The Best Of"], is that of the artist of ethnic origins who tries to break out of the confining boundaries of his background to become a citizen of the world. In the only partially successful search for wider acclaim with material like … his own, rather simplistically optimistic, "Wonderful World, Beautiful People," he loses the chance to properly define himself. On the face of it,...