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Cymande must be the most unappreciated London band of all time, and this is such an embarrassment I can hardly even type it.
As told in last year’s excellent documentary, Getting It Back: The Story of Cymande, the members were the children of the Windrush generation, a group of Caribbean kids in freezing England who found some answers in music.
In 1971 they formed Cymande, a group that over three supernaturally special funk-soul-jazz albums, took on the anti-immigration hostility they faced in the streets with defiant, and danceable, hope. And yet, such was the institutional racism here, they were roundly ignored by the press and shut out by the industry. They quietly broke up in 1974.
In America, however, it was different. The country loved them from the start, and after they split, the love grew to the point where street party proto-DJs in New York invented a genre to better loop and mix their songs: heard of hip-hop?
Oh, and disco. They were one of the progenitors of that too.
This is no exaggeration. House music? Rave? Cymande’s tunes were among a treasured few that DJs wove through it all. And they popped up as samples on huge hits by The Fugees and De la Soul.
Meanwhile, back in England: nothing. Oh, we embraced all this American music, but not the British band that lay within it.
Yes, this is embarrassing. But thankfully we now have a chance to make amends as Cymande are back with a new album.
Called Renascence, it carries all of the magic of their ‘lost’ 70s albums and needs to be embraced by every Londoner, not simply by way of apology but because it is inspiring work that will lift all our spirits in difficult times.
“It’s a long-held ambition getting to this point, where we're thankfully getting some recognition,” says bassist Steve Scipio, who is speaking to the Standard with guitarist Patrick Patterson, “We've had the recognition in the US and the UK is now catching up.”
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Indeed, there has been a new awareness of Cymande building, thanks to the documentary and a steady stream of lauded shows, including last year’s sold out show at Shepherd’s Bush Empire.
But this album feels like an assertion, not a reminder. It is them seeking and finding the original drive they had, which was to say something about the world, even attempt to change it. Yes, the type of drive that used to flood through the veins of bands but is incredibly rare now.
“The journey is not short term,” Patterson reflects, “It's just segmented. The music that we've put together now is to take us to the next stage. Each of the tracks on Renascence was intended to achieve a particular purpose. We wanted a cohesive album and I think we got that.”
“It's important for us at this stage in trying to connect with this generation,” says Scipio, “We wanted others artists with us on this project, and you see that we've got Celeste and Jazzy B with us. So that's another step forward in terms of where we're going.”
Produced by Ben Baptie, and featuring long time members keyboardist Adrian Reid and vocalist Raymond Simpson - along with Richard Bailey (Drums), Donald Gamble (Percussion), Denys Baptiste (Saxophone) Kevin Davy (Trumpet) and Toni Kofi (Saxophone) - the album was recorded in the same way as the Seventies, where everything was played live in the studio. This is incredibly important to their songs.
“Because we cut live, the music should not date,” says Scipio, “We just hope that what we put together has that lasting quality.”
“We’re trying to capture mood, to capture the vibe,” adds Patterson, “The feel of those recordings in the Seventies is pretty much what we tried to do with this album. We invent in the studio, perform live and try to get the feel, the groove.
You know, when you're performing like this it’s more difficult than going in and putting on layers. When you perform live, you feed off of each other. For us, our music, that's very important because we connect. And I think that is also what gives our music whatever special thing it has about it that people like. It's the magic musician.”
Now this magic magician who appears is really what this is all about. Listen to Cymande’s music and you have to acknowledge that this mysterious person is there, a presence in the air that is otherworldly.
“It's absolute magic,” says Scipio, “You don't know how happens. I mean, you can do something that's technically right, but doesn't drop in the right place, the harmonics don't intermingle in the same way. But live gives you the opportunity to set that straight and to bring in that magic musician to make the music gel together.”
Let’s rewind and fill in some blanks shall we?
Cymande were formed around Balham in 1971, Patterson and Scipio along with singer/percussionist Ray King, saxophonist Derek Gibbs, conga player Pablo Gonsales, singer/percussionist Joey Dee, saxophonist Peter Serreo, drummer Sam Kelly and flautist/percussionist Mike Rose.
They were stumbled upon by producer John Schroeder, who recorded some demos and convinced Janus Records to sign them. Their first single The Message hit the charts in the States, as did their self-titled first album in 1972. They soon flew over and supported Al Green on stadium tours, where they were rapturously received.
Upon returning back to England? No, nothing. No coverage, no press, no TV, few gigs.
What the documentary shows is how much this was to do with racism. And what’s really chilling is the archive footage of white racists spouting the kind of anti-immigrant rhetoric which matches exactly the kind of hate speech – classed under ‘free speech’ on X – that is blighting this country once again.
This makes Cymande’s new album timely and their return absolutely necessary.
I ask them if this is on their mind and if they have noticed this racism returning?
“You’re speaking to a life experience where it has really never gone away,” Scipio fires back, “The thing about the racism in the 60s and the 70s that impacted us, is that we were from the Caribbean community, and our parents' generation were invited to come to the UK to help to rebuild the UK after the Second World War.
You had people like Enoch Powell, for example, who went down to the Caribbean as part of the government to encourage the people to come up to the UK and help rebuild the country. And then to be treated in that way once you arrive, to meet all that racism, was a terrible experience for us.
The thing about today is that the children are as English as any other person who's been born in the UK. So why are they still having the same experience that we had all those years ago?”
Back in the 70s, after three albums they hit a brick wall, and split up, seemingly having failed to deliver on their promise. Scipio and Patterson both went on to become lawyers, practicing in the UK before living and working in the Caribbean. Cymande was dead.
Only they weren’t. In the States, their albums continued to be played, and in the early 80s their music was discovered by New York kids with sound systems who were formulating the beginning of hip-hop. The richly played, highly danceable funk of Cymande, and their stone-cold classic tune Bra in particular, was treated one of the crucial base layers for all that New York dance music.
But they weren’t aware that any of this was going on for a long time.
“We both moved to the Caribbean,” says Scipio, “We were practicing law at the time when the interest in the Cymande catalogue really took off. I was not aware of what was happening. It was my children who made me aware of the new interest in the music. One of the first songs my son brought me was the De La Soul sample [on Change in Speak]. that then triggered my interest in terms of what may be going on out there.
I think I then communicated it to Patrick as well. Then we had The Fugees and I became aware of all the other sampling and the rapping that was going on. Our music was being utilised by this new generation of musicians, to communicate their own music, their own message. The fact that they could find something worthwhile in our music was incredible.”
When they consider the musical landscape now, for all its faults, it is one where new technology allows artists to have direct access to audiences and this has allowed young generations access to Cymande’s music.
Back in the 70s, there were certain routes you had to follow if you wanted your music to be heard, and the band say that in the UK, those routes were closed off to them, and that this deliberate.
“One of important things we need to be able get across is that the lack of profile of high quality black music was part of an active process on the part of the British music industry,” says Scipio “Active, not accidental. We got no exposure. We got no opportunity for what we were doing to be properly heard by the record buying community.
Of course if they did, they might have liked it. But that would have meant Top of the Post would have to change its framework. The music press would have had to do things differently. The music would no longer be designated in the horrible way that it was: as jungle music.
The death of black music was an active process in the part of the British music industry.”
They experienced first hand the racism that was endemic in British society. As young men, they were in a period before the Race Relations Act of 1968: “We experienced true racism, where it was blatant and there was no way of saying this is illegal, is unlawful. Then the Act came in and things started to change a little but their indirect way was still to make it difficult for people to achieve their true ambition.”
What Cymande’s music did then, and does now, is to move above and beyond this kind of hateful thinking with the message of their music, and the danceable feel of it, which provides a gathering place to unite.
It can also be considered spiritual, another untrendy word in today’s musical landscape.
Says Patterson, “We’re in a period where a lot of the music now is computer generated. And I think that has taken away from some of this spirituality.
In the old days, when you played music, you spent time learning your music and you tried to communicate your music through your instrument, and it was very much about how you feel. You use your emotions to make the instrument speak. With a lot of the computer-generated stuff, that is not being achieved.”
Well, it all comes together on the new album: message, magic, spirituality. The opener Chasing An Empty Dream is an electrifying slice of musicianship that considers a younger generation who are adrift.
“I think the first few lines really tells what the song is about,” says Scipio, “’Sometimes I wonder, has it all been in vain?/ It seems nothing matters, everybody chasing fame.’ What that's saying is that we're not connecting in the same way with the younger generation. The older generation used to provide guidance in the old days. But the older generation today, they're busy still pursuing their own things.
With the new technology, there isn't this same connectedness between the older generation and the younger generation. They're not providing guidance in the same way as occurred in the past. And there's a young generation who are off doing their own individual thing without being looked after.”
The songs on the album are all of this quality, from the spine-tingling Only One Way featuring Celeste, to the effortless cool of Sweeden and the defiant How We Roll, featuring Jazzie B.
And then there’s new single Coltrane, an ode to John Coltrane that tries to take learnings from the jazz legend’s life and work.
“Coltrane is about aspiration, doing things at a particularly high level,” says Steve, “It’s not about an individual necessarily, but about an individual as an idea, as a concept, as a unifier. When we think about him as an artist, he's somebody that we in our community would look up to. And there are a number of people who have that ability to draw us in and require us to aspire to that kind of high quality.
In that sense it's a metaphor for doing the best you can, being the best you can and recognising that within your space, you have real quality.”
Patterson adds, “There's a spirituality about Coltrane. Just the name is for some musicians, spiritual. Because music comes from a place that none of us can really specifically identify and takes a message to us that none of us really can fully explain.
It's a special thing in our lives, a very special thing in our lives. We just have to leave ourselves open to it and to acceptance of what it can do.”
It's remarkable really, to have a record of this magnitude land by a band who were so ignored. It’s not so much another chance for them as another chance for us.
They have a US tour in February, then the band will be playing some UK festivals this summer before a Brixton Academy show in October.
“We love being able to go out there now at this stage of our life and be playing the music, something that we did all those years ago and that we're still building on,” says Scipio, “People in the past thought we were an American band. Only a few years ago that they realized that this is a band that came out of the UK.”
Patterson says, “Those people who picked up Symantec in the years after we came off the road, I think they have a special place in their mind and in their heart about Symantec and an expectation of what our music would be. And I hope that this album matches up to that expectation.”
It does and it’s about time we gave them some proper love.
Renascence is out now. https://cymandeofficial.com/
