Ten years after his last project, the so-called “grandfather of reggae”, Jimmy Cliff, 78, released a new album in mid-August. A committed album, far from the carefree spirit of the years Reggae Night.
HAS 80 years old, the patriarch of Jamaican music wants to use his notoriety to do what he started singing for half a century ago: to talk about what can be disturbing, what some would like to forget, what sometimes divides us… In this case, the way its treated refugees all over the world.
The main title of the album Refugees is called Refugees, performed with Wycleef Jean, lead singer of the Fugees. And here’s what the lyrics say: “IThere’s been an exodus of Europeans to America, now there’s an exodus from the Middle East to Europe, and from Africa to Europe, an exodus of people like you and me who are just looking for each other a home.“Jimmy Cliff dreams that this title will become an anthem, like the songs about the Vietnam War were when he started in the 1960s. This is what he explains in a daily interview The Independent : “The whole album was born out of hearing the same stories over and over again of what is happening on the globe, especially on the African continent.“
Listening to it, we obviously think of Sudan, Ethiopia, those who perished in the Mediterranean, others who wait in Calais dreaming of England, or on the border between the United States and Mexico. after having fled the cartel wars of Central America, we think of Afghanistan, the Rohingyas in Burma, the Ukrainians of course. We think about it.
And this is exactly the effect anticipated by Jimmy Cliff who, to provide an answer and not just an emotion, contacted the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to create a web page and answer the question “what can I do ?“. Beyond donations to associations, he suggests giving his time, becoming a volunteer, or even fighting against stereotypes when we hear them. Jimmy Cliff who says “dream of a world without refugees”, in other words without war, without persecution, without economic emergency. “It’s utopian“, he says, but that’s also why we make songs.