By 2012 Jimmy Cliff was already described on his official biography as a Grammy-winning Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee, musician, actor, songwriter, producer and humanitarian. That year marked what the same biography calls “another watershed moment” with Rebirth — an album produced by Rancid’s Tim Armstrong that returned Cliff’s sound to the ska-rocksteady-reggae arc of his early career and earned some of the strongest reviews of his later decades.

Rebirth and social justice

In an NPR interview timed to the album’s release, Cliff said the title referred both to his own career and to humanity at large. He paid tribute to Joe Strummer — whose last studio recording was the duet “Over the Border” with Cliff — as “one of the stalwarts of social justice expression in his music.” Reviewing Cliff’s Jamaica 50 concert at London’s indigO2 on 6 August 2012, the Independent singled out “Children’s Bread,” a track from Rebirth, as speaking “out for the hard lives of still oppressed people” — the same underdog thread that ran from “The Harder They Come” through “Many Rivers to Cross.”

Jamaica 50

The indigO2 date was part of a twelve-gig series celebrating Jamaica’s 1962 independence, the Independent noted — staged the weekend after Usain Bolt’s Olympic sprints and a rare West Indies Test win in Kingston. Cliff, then 64, arrived after midnight in a gold-patched quilt and crown, the review recorded, and held the room through “You Can Get It If You Really Want,” “Miss Jamaica” and a stretched “Bongo Man” medley. The Independent profile published the same month confirmed he would play that concert while promoting Rebirth — his first major album cycle since the Hall of Fame induction he had called the start of “phase two.”

Why it matters

Cliff’s humanitarian identity was not a late add-on: it ran through the lyrics he chose in 2012 and the stages he sought out for Jamaica’s jubilee. The Rebirth year set up the Grammy triumph to come — and foreshadowed the children’s advocacy his Jimmy Cliff Foundation would amplify in partnership with Scotiabank in 2015.

Listen and dig deeper

Sources: Jimmy Cliff — official biography; NPR — “Jimmy Cliff On Career ‘Rebirth’ And The Nature Of Success” (Aug 4, 2012); The Independent — “Jamaica 50: Jimmy Cliff, IndigO2, London” (Aug 2012); The Independent — “My Secret Life: Jimmy Cliff”.

Editor's note: This entry is part of the JamaicansMusic online museum — a career timeline assembled from the archive. It is dated to the era it documents; every claim is drawn from the linked sources.