Many Rivers To Cross: Jimmy Cliff, Jamaica’s Inner Cities And The Music That Raised Us

By Nyan Reynolds

News Americas, NEW YORK, NY, Thurs. Nov. 27, 2025: This week brought a kind of news that stops you where you stand. The great Jimmy Cliff passed away, and for many of us scattered across the Jamaican diaspora, his death felt personal in a way that is difficult to explain. You do not have to meet someone for them to shape your life. You do not need to shake their hand for their voice to guide you through childhood. Sometimes an artist becomes so deeply woven into your memory that losing them feels like losing a relative.

The late Jimmy Cliff (JimmyCliff.com image)

For me, that moment came when my mother called and said, “Nyan, Jimmy Cliff died.” She knows what his music meant to me. She knows what it meant to our home. She knows what it meant to the thousands of children who grew up in places where hope felt like a luxury and where struggle was the closest thing to normal. When she told me the news, it was as if the entire weight of my childhood stirred inside me. The world was rightfully honoring a global icon, but those of us who grew up in inner-city Kingston felt something even deeper. We were mourning the man who helped carry us through some of the hardest days of our lives.

Jimmy Cliff was a musician to the world, but to inner-city Jamaica he was something else entirely. He was the storyteller who made our pain “speakable.” He was the prophet who reassured us that brighter days would come. He was the familiar voice that traveled through zinc fences, wooden windows, tight alleys, crowded yards, and tiny kitchens filled with the smell of Sunday dinners. When he sang about rivers, rainbows, and sunshine, he was giving language to experiences we had no words for.

Circa 1997

To understand the depth of this loss, one must first understand the environment where Jimmy Cliff’s music took root. As a young boy growing up in Kingston, I lived in a house built from wood and secured by a roof of zinc sheets that rattled when the wind blew. Political violence had become a part of our backdrop. Poverty was not a passing condition but the frame through which we viewed the world. Our homes stood on fragile foundations of plywood and hope, and many of us were raised by mothers and grandmothers who stretched what little they had to keep us safe.

An example of a home in Jamaica 1990s

In those circumstances music was more than entertainment. It was survival. It was therapy. It was companionship. It was the only thing capable of lifting our spirits on days when everything else felt too heavy. Children of my generation learned to lean on music the way others leaned on social programs or safety nets. We did not have those. We had the radio. And on many nights, when the breeze moved softly through the wooden boards of our home, Jimmy Cliff’s voice filled the gaps between struggle and imagination.

His lyrics were not abstract poetry. They were reflections of the very world we were living in. When he sang “Many rivers to cross, but I can’t seem to find my way over,” he was not speaking metaphorically to children like us. He was naming the weight of poverty. He was capturing the exhaustion of families who fought for survival one day at a time. He was putting melody to the emotional and economic rivers we had to cross. Each verse felt like a confession we were too young to articulate, yet old enough to understand in our bones.

That song became an anthem for countless Jamaicans who felt stuck between where they were and where they hoped to be. It held the tension of wanting more but having so little, of dreaming big but living small, and of waking every morning with a heart that refused to give up. For those of us raised in inner-city Kingston, the line “This loneliness won’t leave me alone” was not simply a lyric. It was the reality of watching fathers disappear into the night, brothers get pulled into violence, and friends migrate only to become distant memories.

Jimmy Cliff sang into those wounds, and somehow his voice made the loneliness feel lighter.

Another song, “You Can Get It If You Really Want,” became the anthem of determination for Jamaica’s poorest communities. It reminded us that effort had value, even when opportunities did not. It encouraged the belief that perseverance could bend circumstances. Although the world often quoted the line “but you must try, try and try” as motivational advice, those words meant something different to a child who had to fight for everything, including joy.

Then there was “I Can See Clearly Now,” a song that captured the promise of better days with a simplicity only Jimmy Cliff could deliver. When he sang about the sunshine he had been praying for, those of us who grew up navigating danger, hunger, and instability knew exactly what he meant. We prayed for the same thing. We prayed for a break in the struggle. We prayed for a future that felt safer. We prayed for a day when our rivers would no longer feel so deep.

I often think back to those early years. I can still see my mother preparing dinner in our small wooden kitchen as Jimmy’s music rose from the radio in the corner. The house was simple, but his voice gave it warmth. There were times when I would sit near the window, listening to the sound of the zinc roof expanding under the heat, and for a moment the difficulties of life seemed manageable. Music has a way of coloring even the darkest memories. And Jimmy Cliff was part of the color that allowed many of us to hope.

As I grew older and eventually migrated, his songs continued to accompany me. They stayed with me through new challenges and unfamiliar worlds. Music like his becomes part of your identity, especially when it represents the place that raised you. It is no coincidence that I later wrote Echoes of Ska, a book that celebrates the early sounds of Jamaica’s musical evolution. I think, in many ways, the book was my way of honoring the artists who gave us something to hold onto when life felt unbearably heavy. It was a tribute to the men like Jimmy Cliff who shaped not only our culture but our resilience.

His passing forces us to reflect on the deeper metaphor in his music. Jimmy Cliff understood rivers, not just as bodies of water but as symbols of hardship, perseverance, and transformation. A river can be an obstacle or a path. It can separate or carry. It can drown or deliver. In our lives, we all face rivers that feel impossible to cross. For some, it is poverty. For others, it is violence, grief, trauma, or the quiet battles that no one sees.

Jimmy spent his life singing about these crossings. And in doing so, he prepared us for ours.

When I think of his death, I imagine the river he so frequently sang about. He has now reached the end of it. He has crossed the final stretch that no human returns from. For a man who carried the burdens of millions through his music, it feels fitting that his final rest is framed by the metaphor he gave us. He has reached the side where ancestors stand waiting. He has arrived at a peace he helped so many of us imagine during our hardest days.

The grief many Jamaicans feel today is layered. It is grief for an artist, yes, but also grief for a part of our past. Jimmy Cliff was one of the voices that shaped the emotional landscape of Jamaica’s inner cities. His music traveled through generations, binding families together through rhythm and resilience. His death reminds us of a time when struggle was all we knew, yet we survived because voices like his reassured us that our rivers could be crossed.

For the diaspora, the pain is unique. We carry our country in our hearts, not in our daily environment. When a cultural giant falls, the distance feels heavier. His music connected us to home even when home felt far away. Now that he has departed, the nostalgia grows louder. His songs become both memory and mourning.

As a writer, I feel a responsibility to honor his legacy. Echoes of Ska now holds a deeper meaning for me, because it reflects the very foundation Jimmy Cliff helped build. Without artists like him, there would be no stories to pass down, no cultural memory to preserve, and no soundtrack to remind us of who we are. His contributions shaped the platform from which many of us now speak, write, and create.

Jimmy Cliff’s journey has ended, but his music will continue to guide others across their own rivers. The melodies that once drifted through wooden houses in Kingston will keep traveling through generations long after all of us are gone. His voice will remain a bridge from hardship to hope, from sorrow to renewal, and from loneliness to the comfort of knowing that brighter days can and do come.

He has crossed over. He has reached the far side of the river he sang about. And for those of us who remain, the music he left behind will continue to light the way.

May his soul find rest. May his legacy live on. And may every child in Jamaica who still sits in a tiny wooden house under a zinc roof hear his voice and believe that they, too, can make it to the sunshine he promised.

Jimmy, you’ve crossed the river and from me to you, “here is the sunshine you’ve been praying for.” With love.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Nyan Reynolds is a U.S. Army veteran and published author whose novels and cultural works draw from his Jamaican heritage, military service and life experiences. His writing blends storytelling, resilience and heritage to inspire readers.