The Super-Sampled Band Cymande Made Funk With a Message. It's Back.
In the late '70s, when the star hip-hop producer Prince Paul was just 10 years old, he heard a song that stopped him cold.
'Bra,' by a little-known British funk group named Cymande (pronounced 'sih-MANH-day'), had become a staple at the New York park parties Paul attended, a place where D.J.s were creating the new art form of hip-hop. ''Bra' was one of the first breakbeats I ever heard,' Paul said. 'The bass in the track is what drew me first. It hits your spirit so deep, it pierces the soul.'
Small wonder that when Paul became a producer years later, he used the interplay between the pinging bass of 'Bra' and its shimmering guitar as the bedrock of De La Soul's classic 1989 track 'Change in Speak.' 'Just a one-bar loop was enough to be incredibly impactful,' he said.
He was hardly alone in his discovery. Other artists and producers also began seizing on Cymande samples for records by Gang Starr and the Sugarhill Gang, among others. Over time, more than 40 acts anchored their tracks on the trippy guitar and mysterious bass from another Cymande song, 'Dove,' including Wu-Tang Clan, EPMD and, most successfully, the Fugees, who made it the foundation of the title track from their smash album 'The Score.'
The band's bassist, Steve Scipio, didn't find out about his group's second proxy life until it reached full boil in the '90s, when his son, a rap fan, tipped him off. 'I had no idea for the longest time,' Scipio, 74, said with a laugh.
The group had stopped performing in 1974 and, a few years later, its two primary members — Scipio and the guitarist Patrick Patterson — left the United Kingdom to enjoy successful new careers as lawyers in the Caribbean, from where their parents had emigrated in the 1950s. Scipio rose to become the attorney general of Anguilla, a position he held for seven years.
But with their subsequent financial cushioning and rising hip-hop profile, they began reviving Cymande in fits and starts over the next few decades. On Friday, their slow-rolling comeback will finally reach full speed with the release of 'Renascence,' Cymande's first widely available new album in 41 years; an LP with a more limited release arrived in 2012.
'We always believed that, at some point, we would continue the mission we started,' Scipio said. 'We just didn't think it would take so much time.'
The protracted delay mirrors the many obstacles the musicians faced as migrants to the U.K. decades ago. While the pair now live in Anguilla, for the interview, conducted by video, Scipio spoke from his children's home in Kent, England, while Patterson, 75, spoke from his kids' place in London, three miles from where the two grew up, in Balham. With joy, they recalled their early days in Guyana, which has strong cultural connections to the Caribbean.
'At the time Guyana was still a colony and most of the high-profile jobs were taken by English people,' Scipio said. 'But we were kids, so we weren't aware of that.'
Their families, who were friends, came to London when Scipio was 13 and Patterson 8, seeking further education to advance their careers. But their children's experience at school had a negative effect. 'Guyana had the best educational system in the whole Caribbean,' Scipio said. 'I was far more advanced than the other kids in my London class. But, instead of encouraging that, my teachers made me sit idle in the back of the room.'
At the same time, the musicians' parents found their opportunities for advancement limited. Though Caribbean immigrants had been strongly encouraged to come and help rebuild postwar London in the '50s, they found themselves demonized by the '60s, fueled by anti-immigrant rhetoric. 'Suddenly, politicians said, 'There's too many of them, let's send them back,'' Patterson said.
Playing instruments, which the two friends learned on their own, became the most positive force in their lives. In 1971, they formed Cymande, taking the name from a calypso term for dove. The other members, including the supple singer Ray King and the spirited conga player Pablo Gonsales, also had immigrant roots, in Jamaica, St. Vincent and Nigeria, giving the group ties to a wealth of Afro-Caribbean styles.
The lyrics they wrote either celebrated their culture or commented on the racism they faced because of it. In 'The Message,' they stressed the power of group resistance ('Remember, you've been told / together, we can go'), while in 'Changes' they soothed the community's wounds ('No love has been displayed out here / and common pains have brought us near.')
'We felt it would be a dereliction of duty if we didn't write about those things,' Patterson said.
The band's music proved equally purposeful. Though it has a funky pull enlivened by multiple layers of percussion, the play between the instruments remains light and elegant, with lots of space left for dreaming. 'Patrick's guitar symbolizes the subtleness of the sound,' Scipio said.
Prince Paul likened the sensual relationship between the band's guitar and bass to 'a perfect conversation, where no one talks over each other.'
The singularity of Cymande's sound intrigued the producer John Schroeder, who got the band a record deal resulting in three impeccable albums cut in London, including a self-titled debut in 1972 (which features 'Bra' and 'Dove'). Still, its music had its greatest initial impact in the United States, where songs like the mid-tempo groove 'The Message' earned enough airplay to make the charts, leading to an invitation for the group to open a Stateside tour for Al Green, and to play dates with acts like Ramsey Lewis and Patti LaBelle. When Cymande returned to England, however, it got no love.
'They would accept Black music from America, because it was from far away, but not Black music from Britain,' Patterson said.
Discouraged, the group disbanded, and Scipio and Patterson retrained as lawyers, encouraged by family members in the legal profession. They said racism limited their path, which precipitated their return to the Caribbean.
The group's reformation began in earnest in 2012, resulting in 'A Simple Act of Faith,' an album that wasn't well-received and is unavailable on streaming. Cymande is in far finer form on 'Renascence,' despite the fact that Scipio and Patterson are the sole original members on it. (The others were sidelined mainly for health reasons.) The album comes on the heels of a documentary about the band, 'Getting It Back: The Story of Cymande,' released in 2022. To further spread the word, an American tour starts in February.
Though 'Renascence' continues the band's tradition of socially aware lyrics, the album varies its classic sound by adding some strings and guest artists, including Jazzie B, the British producer, Soul II Soul founder and longtime Cymande fan who, through his parents, also has roots in the Caribbean. 'Those guys are from the same community that I grew up in,' he said. 'But our styles are so different. My songs are driving and theirs are silky, so it creates something new.'
Having the chance to create fresh combinations with its music, while seeing its vintage work embraced by a new generation, has affected Cymande deeply. 'To us, it's a total vindication for what we set out to do in the '70s,' Scipio said. 'It proves we were doing something of substance all along.'
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