“The Message”: Nyah Rock from the UK

K-Tel put out a 70s hits package called Super Bad and wisely decided to include Cymande‘s moody and mysterious 1972 hit, “The Message“:

“The Message“

Cymande (1972)

According to Discogs —

Formed 1971 in London, England, disbanded 1974. Cymande played what they themselves called Nyah Rock: a mixture of funk, soul, reggae and African rhythms.

Pronounced Sah–MAHN–day

(image courtesy of Discogs)

“The Message” – issued in the US on Janus – reached #48 on the pop chart and cracked the Top 30 on the R&B chart in 1973. Their debut album would also make Billboard‘s Top 50 album chart.

Cash Box‘s February 3, 1973 news item notes “the unusual combination of rhythms and folklore from Africa and the West Indies, overlaid with an awareness of rock and jazz” (this same news item would also inform its readers that “the teachings of Rasta Man, a shepherd/teacher who espouses peace and love, are expressed in many of their songs”).

Cash Box

Dec. 30, 1972

The Guardian‘s Steve Rose celebrated the band’s legacy in his tribute for the 9 March 2022 edition, “Cymande: The Classic British Funk Band You Don’t Know You Know“:

Cymande’s original seven members were all Caribbean-born. Founders [Patrick] Patterson and [Steve] Scipio came from Guyana as teenagers. They lived in Balham, a few doors down from each other, and have been friends ever since. The others came from Jamaica and St Vincent.

Patterson describes UK schooling as “a horrible experience”. When they arrived, they were more academically advanced than the British kids – so they were put at the back of the class and told to wait for the others to catch up. “That was the first experience of this horrible spectre of gatekeeping. It travels across cultural, political, economic circumstances that we as Black people encountered here also, which meant that no matter if you were well-qualified or not, putting you over a white person was considered unacceptable.”

Patterson and Scipio, both self-taught musicians, worked with British-Nigerian percussionist Ginger Johnson and in a jazz-rock four-piece called Metre before gathering musicians through the local grapevine to form Cymande, the name taken from a popular calypso song about a dove.