The soundtrack to the first Jamaican-produced feature film, The Harder They Come, has been inducted into the United States Library of Congress after being named an “audio treasure worthy of preservation” by the Library’s National Recording Registry.

According to Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden, the album – which features six songs, including its title track, from Reggae legend Jimmy Cliff – was determined to be worthy of induction due to its cultural, historical and aesthetic importance in the nation’s recorded sound heritage.

“The Harder They Come was the first Jamaican-produced feature film, in 1972,” the Library of Congress noted.

“The movie soundtrack, released on Island Records, features six
songs recorded by Cliff [and] has been credited with taking reggae worldwide while also presenting other reggae stars like Toots & the Maytals to a global audience.”

Around the time of the film’s release, the soundtrack made its way to American audiences and has been credited by Rolling Stone
magazine as “the album that took reggae worldwide”.

Among the album’s tracks is the seminal Many Rivers to Cross, which has since been covered by artistes such as Cher, John Lennon, UB40, Annie Lennox, and Percy Sledge.

While only the title track was recorded specifically for the film, the soundtrack album collected numerous reggae stars and presented essential works in the genre to a new global audience.

Other reggae pioneers and luminaries who appeared on the album include Toots and the Maytals (Pressure Drop and Sweet and Dandy), Desmond Dekker (Shanty Town) and The Melodians (Rivers of Babylon).

This exemplar of the diverse sounds of reggae in the 1960s and ‘70s has enjoyed enormous critical praise and continued popularity in the U.S, including appearing on every version of Rolling Stone’s Top 500 albums of all time.

It is for this reason, that the soundtrack stood out among the 900 public nominations for recordings to be added to the registry, and is among the 25 recordings to be added to those that have already been preserved.

The recordings most recently selected for the National Recording Registry bring the number of titles on the registry to 575, representing a small portion of the national library’s vast recorded sound collection of nearly three million items.

The Harder They Come soundtrack is only the second reggae album to be inducted with the first being Burnin’ by The Wailers.

2020 National Recording Registry

1. Edison’s St. Louis tinfoil recording (1878)
2. Nikolina — Hjalmar Peterson (1917) (single)
3. Smyrneikos Balos — Marika Papagika (1928) (single)
4. When the Saints Go Marching In — Louis Armstrong & his Orchestra (1938) (single)
5. Christmas Eve Broadcast–Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill (December 24, 1941)
6. The Guiding Light — Nov. 22, 1945
7. Odetta Sings Ballads and Blues — Odetta (1957) (album)
8. Lord, Keep Me Day by Day — Albertina Walker and the Caravans (1959) (single)  
9. Roger Maris hits his 61 st homerun (October 1, 1961)
10. Aida — Leontyne Price, et.al. (1962) (album)
11. Once a Day — Connie Smith (1964) (single)
12. Born Under a Bad Sign — Albert King (1967) (album)
13. Free to Be…You & Me — Marlo Thomas and Friends (1972) (album)
14. The Harder They Come — Jimmy Cliff (1972) (album)
15. Lady Marmalade — Labelle (1974) (single)
16. Late for the Sky — Jackson Browne (1974) (album)
17. Bright Size Life — Pat Metheny (1976) (album)
18. The Rainbow Connection — Kermit the Frog (1979) (single)
19. Celebration — Kool & the Gang (1980) (single)
20. Richard Strauss: Four Last Songs — Jessye Norman (1983) (album)
21. Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation 1814 — Janet Jackson (1989) (album)
22. Partners — Flaco Jiménez (1992) (album)
23. Somewhere Over the Rainbow/What A Wonderful World — Israel
    Kamakawiwo’ole (1993) (single)
24. Illmatic — Nas (1994) (album)
25. This American Life: The Giant Pool of Money (May 9, 2008)