–Memories you have from that being

MUSICIANS, like other artists and communicators, impact us in that profound way that either irritates or helps us to stay in touch with our awareness of the world around us and our own feelings at times, and its inner impact, especially when we are doubtful of our ability to hold on to a sensible method to wrestle with one’s angel and thus inherit the blessing of the hard work we labour on.
The Jamaican singer and songwriter Jimmy Cliff has passed away, and I offer my condolences to his family and countrymen. I can remember talking with my Godfather, when he assured me that whatever you do in this life, try to let it be an asset in some way to other humans, who will learn and be inspired by it.
There will always be music to dance with exclusively, while other melodies beckon us to listen and learn. At eleven to twelve years old, few of us understood this ‘Vietnam war thing’ that crossed over in adult language. For my friends and me, it was a Jimmy Cliff song (I state this from memory) because our top music stores are gone. They provided, in their era, cassettes and pop music data. I presume that the song “Vietnam” was by Jimmy Cliff, and the sad deployment of Mrs. Brown’s young son to Vietnam. And the news of his death in combat, resonated with our young minds.

Other Jimmy Cliff songs were like a parental statement: “Better days are coming”. When I wanted to know who sang a pop tune, there was always the late Pepe Morison. The impact of songs like the classic “You Can Get It If You Really Want” inspired many in GT long before Swamp Dogg’s hair-raising “Sam Stone” defined the Vietnam combat experience in a frightening, distinct way.
With lyrics and melodies, the musician becomes a people’s hero when he resonates the experience through feelings. Jimmy Cliff, one of the heralds, with Eric Donaldson, Marcia Aitkins, John Holt, Prince Buster, The Melodians, Ken Boothe, Dennis Brown, and even Bob Marley, who I was told had touched these shores before, were known mostly from the radio. And lest we forget the ‘Punch boxes’ that most 11–13-year-old schoolboys explored (a bob, 25c, for a three-song play). Many top GT musicians have indicated that Marley, without locks, came to GT before the utterance of the Bob Marley and the Wailers Rasta era.
It cannot be doubted that the musician, like the artist, is pivotal to the social evolution of a people’s sense of being. The bard, especially in his lyrics, shows that what we have witnessed, we know and have experienced. My mother sang and won top place in something she described as the Ovaltine Song Competition, but the guys who ran it stole the cash prizes; the main character died overseas some years ago.
All of this information came before I attained manhood and offered my art services commercially, but it never left my mind — with an understanding of the cultural business that goes with it from its genesis — as I now pass it to my offspring.