Reggae legend Jimmy Cliff is headlining the festival on Easter Saturday.
Reggae legend Jimmy Cliff is headlining the festival on Easter Saturday.
There'll be plenty to celebrate when reggae legend Jimmy Cliff headlines the Bay of Islands Music Festival on March 31.
Sure there's plenty to get excited about when we've got a genuine musical legend, a true icon appearing in Northland — and Cliff is as big as they come in reggae history — but it will also be a special occasion for the great man himself. He'll turn 70 the day after the show while still in the region.
"Oh yeah, I was hoping nobody noticed that," Cliff laughed when I asked him about his big birthday and what he'd be doing to celebrate it while in New Zealand.
"That will be wonderful to have my 70th while there," he says in that famous West Indian patois from his Kingston, Jamaica, home.
Cliff says what drives him now is the same as always, the desire to take his art to as wide an audience as possible.
"But to celebrate it? Well I'm going to be in a country that has got a lot of natural beauty and nature. I'm from a country that has natural beauty and nature so I'm looking forward to getting more of that over there."
The word legend is often overused, but it's not with Cliff, who has written some of the genre's best, and most loved songs, including The Harder They Come, Reggae Night, Roots Woman, Vietnam, Wonderful World, Beautiful People, We Are All One, Many Rivers To Cross and You Can Get It If You Really Want It.
Cliff was here in 2012 for WOMAD and again in 2014 and said he loved the country on those visits so is looking forward to seeing more parts. He's heading here after playing a set at the Byron Bay Jazz and Blues Fest, in Australia, on the Friday night, before jetting back again to play the festival again on Easter Monday.
I'm really looking forward to the show as I couldn't make that WOMAD gig and recall to Cliff that the last time I saw him was 1984 in Brixton, London.
Kerikeri's own Troy Kingi will join reggae legend Jimmy Cliff and others at the Bay of Islands Music Festival in Waitangi.
He's pretty sure it was actually 1985 at Brixton Academy, but given that he's been performing since he was a young child, and had his first hit in Jamaica as a 14 year old, I'm amazed he can remember such individual gigs.
He's also well aware of just how much New Zealand loves reggae and isn't surprised, giving its strong Maori culture.
"I know New Zealand loves reggae. It's a universal language. Countries like New Zealand, which have a large indigenous population gravitate towards music like reggae. It has a powerful message, and people can relate to the sentiment. It's also very rhythmic and it vibrates with people."
I first got into reggae, and the delights to Jimmy Cliff, as a young punk rocker in the UK, turned on by bands like The Clash, which had a DJ spinning reggae tunes at its gigs.
Northland soul singer Teeks performs at the Vodafone NZ Music Awards in 2017.
The band also covered reggae numbers like Junior Murvin's Police and Thieves on its debut album, and incorporated reggae beats into some of its own songs, like White Man In Hammersmith Palais.
It helped introduce reggae to a largely white working class UK audience and helped pave the way for the success of ska and UK reggae acts like UB40 (which incidentally had its first international number one single in NZ).
UB40 made its name partly with its cover of Cliff's Many Rivers To Cross and his songs have been covered by countless artists over the years.
"Punk is protest music and reggae is about protest too so I can see why the punks liked it," Cliff says.
"Reggae was saying the same thing as the punks and for the rest of the world reggae is a music that uplifts people. It's a social and political thing, but it also brings great joy.. . it hits you in the soul and people feel that."
Kiwi reggae heavyweights Katchafire will also be performing at the Bay of Islands Music Festival in Waitangi.
And in a nice twist, Cliff covered one of the Clash's song Guns of Brixton a few years ago after meeting Clash frontman Joe Strummer and recording with him.
"Joe Strummer was a great man. I worked with him and he inspired me a lot so I wanted to give something back to people like Joe Strummer [by covering one of the band's songs]. I was proud to have know him."
Protest is something Cliff does well too. His song Vietnam was released in 1970 and received the ultimate accolade. The great protest song writer Bob Dylan called "Vietnam"the best protest song he had ever heard.
"That was a huge accolade for me. He is one of the greatest ever songwriters and protest songwriters, so that coming from him was great."
Cliff says what drives him now is the same as always, the desire to take his art to as wide an audience as possible.
"I want to play the stadiums to thousands and thousands of people. The Rolling Stones, they play to those stadiums and I want to do that. I've always been an artist, drawing and making music and acting and I do pottery. In fact I might do a bit more acting soon."
Cliff starred in the hit movie The Harder They Come where he played the lead part of Ivanhoe "Ivan"Martin, a poor Jamaican man in search of a job.
Ivan interests the record producer in a song he writes and performs, The Harder They Come, but he only gets $20 for it. He dreams of stardom, but the stranglehold the producer has on the music industry condemns Ivan to work for a pittance.
Cliff then gives the Northern Advocate a bit of an exclusive by saying that he's actually reading a 'very good' script that he may well take up.
And, he then reveals, it's a bit of a follow up to The Harder They Come and will likely be called Many Rivers to Cross, but he wouldn't go into any further details.
"That (acting) needs to be the next career for me. I've got a good script on the table that I'll look at this year."
All this is a far cry from 1962 when his father took him to Kingston to go to the Kingston Technical school.
"I dropped out and did what I really wanted to do, I'm an artist at heart. My dad said 'okay, you are on your own' and I said 'okay, I'll take that'," Cliff says.
"After a few months I had a hit song, then another, then another. He heard and people started to say to him 'your son is doing well in Kingston' and he'd say 'God gave him the gift'.
"He didn't take any credit."
■ Jimmy Cliff headlines the Bay of Islands Music Festival on March 31. Acts include Northland soul sensation Teeks and musician Troy Kingi. Katchafire, Louis Baker, Tami Neilson, Rob Ruha, Swamp Thing, Moondog Blues plus island-style roots and soul from Bobby Alu (Australia) are also on.
