International reggae icon Jimmy Cliff was brought to tears as he received the 1982 Norman Manley Award for Excellence in Music during a ceremony at the Carib Cinema. Overwhelmed with emotion, Cliff thanked the audience and declared the honour a powerful reminder that local talents can indeed be celebrated at home. 

Published Thursday July 8, 1982

For excellence in music

- Norman Manley award won by Jimmy Cliff 

JIMMY CLIFF, 35-year-old Jamaican singer, composer, performing artiste, actor, and humanist, was presented with the 1982 Norman Manley Award for Excellence in the field of Music, at the Carib Cinema, on Tuesday night.

The award was presented by Mrs. Edna Manley, wife of the National Hero in whose memory the award is given, and the citation was read by Professor Rev. Nettleford, a member of the Board of Trustees of the Norman Washington Manley Foundation.
Jimmy Cliff wept tears of joy as he told the audience, "I am very touched to be given such an award. There is a saying that a prophet is never honoured in his own country. Now, we have proven that to be wrong.”

Two things in life — appreciation and encouragement — were “an excess amount of energy to help us in our roles in life,” he said. He regarded the award as encouragement and appreciation to go on “to cross the lot of the rivers that we all have to cross as individuals, as a nation, and as a people.”

With tears streaming down his face, Jimmy Cliff then sang Many Rivers to Cross, the song with which he is most identified. He was given a standing ovation at the end.

THE CITATION SAID:
“Jimmy Cliff, composer, performing artiste, pioneer, and a principal originator of that genre of music which has emerged over the past 25 years out of Jamaica, actor and humanist, was born in Somerton, St. James, where his early interest in music and the related arts was nurtured by the sensibilities of Jamaican peasant life and his exposure to folk religion.

“Guided by the values of personal integrity and a sturdy independence, Jimmy Cliff was to sacrifice the glamour of commercial stability for the more rewarding, if uncertain, road to artistic legitimacy.

“He describes himself as a spiritual musician who has often done things that weren't necessarily best for his recording career because ‘my soul, my spirit demanded it.’ He resisted resolutely the temptation to rest on the laurels of the smash hits that surfaced from the world-renowned film The Harder They Come, in which he starred and for which he wrote a great deal of the music. He shunned the glitter of ‘the publicity and propaganda’ (his own words) which surround the selling of an artistic product and went instead to Africa to study and reflect.

“He was to emerge the better artist for it, bringing to the music what was to excite the entire world and what the language of the trade described as ‘lovely, unforgettable melodic hooks and subtle electronic embellishments in the arrangements, fitting hand in glove with the swinging, rocking rhythms of reggae’s unique and irresistible syncopation.’

“Jimmy Cliff’s own distinctive, pliant tenor voice completed the textured musical tapestry which his artistry represents.

“For Jimmy Cliff, his music is his life, his art the vehicle for revolutionary action, his life and creativity a gift to be used in the service of his people.
“MORE THAN ANY OTHER ARTIST of his kind, Jimmy Cliff understands the deep contradictions of Jamaican life and knows how to express our hope in despair, our pain, anger and anguish coupled with tenderness and love in different songs and often in the same song.

“If Sitting in Limbo expresses the futility and frustrations of life among the powerless and the deprived, You Can Do It If You Really Want celebrates the invincibility of the human spirit over great odds.

"If his Number One Rip-Off Man burns with the inflamed rage of the exploited against the greed of the recording business, his Wonderful World, Wonderful People acknowledges the generosity of spirit that can be found among people everywhere, especially his audiences, which from 1968 he began to build through live performances and the still long-running Perry Henzell film, The Harder They Come.
“His conquest of Brazil was repeated all over Latin America in countries like Chile, Panama and Argentina. He was later to conquer Africa, taking back to ancestral hearths a piece of the heritage he had inherited and commanding critical and popular acclaim in Nigeria, Senegal, Cameroon, Zambia and South Africa.”

AMONG THE FIRST TO CONGRATULATE Jimmy Cliff was the guest speaker of the occasion, singer Harry Belafonte.

The guest speaker was introduced by the Chairman of the Board of Trustees, Dr. Matthew Beaubrun, who described the process by which the selection for the award was made by a specially appointed committee.

The award ceremony was highlighted by a musical programme in which music was provided by The Big Band led by Sonny Bradshaw; classical selections were rendered by Paul Shaw on the piano, and songs by David Reid, Dawn Marie Virtue, and the Jamaican Folk Singers.

This was followed by the award ceremony, after which a musical programme of popular music was presented, featuring The Big Band, Myrna Hague and AJ ‘Boots’ Brown who sang.
 

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