Sean liked Jimmy Cliff as part of his general fondness for Jamaican music. The first clip in his YouTube ‘favourites’ is ‘The Harder They Come’ (I don’t know whether he ever watched the movie of the same name). His downloaded music includes the Cliff tracks ‘Many Rivers to Cross’, ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’, ‘Vietnam’ and ‘Wild World’, as well as ‘The Harder They Come’ (Cliff’s version of ‘Wild World’ was on the CD that Clio made to be played at Sean’s wake). He especially admired Cliff’s stunning performance of ‘Many Rivers to Cross’ on a ‘Hootenanny’ edition of Jools Holland’s Later from 2003 or so, and often mentioned it to me.
As a sidelight … I used to do some work for a Ghanaian guy named Clement Dzidonu in Dublin. Clement worked in the Trinity College computing department, and wrote books on computing and personal development. He knew Jimmy Cliff from organizing ‘Rock Against Racism’ concerts in England, and used to visit Cliff in Jamaica. From Google, I see that Clement is now a professor and president of a technology institute in Accra, Ghana, so he seems to have done well for himself.
The road to God knows where ... Brendan O'Brien 