Cymande helped pave the way for hip-hop, disco and house in the '70s – and now it's enjoying a resurgence

Many people who know Cymande, the British band from the early 70s, have their own Cymande origin story. For director Tim MacKenzie-Smith, “it was a mixtape that was passed to me in college and it didn't have a tracklist. It had 90 minutes of brilliant old American funk on it. Rare groove stuff, soul.”

MacKenzie-Smith recognized most of the songs – but not all. As a Shazam-less college student in the mid-'90s, he spent the next several years wondering who exactly had recorded two tracks he “absolutely loved.” Finally, a record-collecting friend dropped Cymande in MacKenzie-Smith's presence, and the director had an epiphany: “My God, these are the songs I've been loving for the last five years!”

“Why doesn't anyone know about this music?” MacKenzie-Smith remembers asking himself. “That started me on a journey of discovery that continued for many years, shouting from the rooftops, telling people all about them.”

Now, MacKenzie-Smith has moved from the proverbial rooftops to the silver screen. After premiering at South By Southwest in 2023 and hitting British Isles cinemas earlier this year, his documentary, Getting It Back: The Story of Cymandeopens in the US on July 26. With the help of a diverse roster of talking heads – from producer Mark Ronson (Amy Winehouse) to members of the psych-funk trio Khruangbin to De La Soul's DJ Maseo and Prince Paul – the film tells the story of an innovative funk band fronting from her time, initially derailed by an unreceptive music industry but eventually embraced by the founders of hip-hop, house and disco music and the generations since.

In the early 70s, several young men in London's Afro-Caribbean diaspora community, including bassist Steve Scipio and guitarist Patrick Patterson, formed Cymande. The band drew on their diverse influences – not just the sounds of their Caribbean homelands, but the contemporary R&B of Otis Redding and Solomon Burke and the forward-thinking jazz of Miles Davis and Dave Brubeck – to create music that, while inviting, defied easy categorization. This proved to be a stumbling block as Cymande tried to raise her profile.

“The industry at the time tended to pigeonhole black musicians in the UK,” says Scipio, 74. Advertising sign from his home in Anguilla over Zoom, recalling the simple “reggae stuff” labels often asked for when Cymande was shopping her demos. “We deliberately chose not to go down that road.”

Scipio and Patterson, also 74 and joining Zoom from London, argue that the British music business treated black and white musicians differently when it came to creativity. “Young white musicians at the time who were experimenting with all kinds of different things, [the British music business] he was helpful to them,” explains Scipio. “As black musicians, we've never been given that opportunity.”

Cymande eventually landed a deal with Janus Records and released an album every year from 1972 to 1974. They even gained fans who opened stateside for legends like Al Green, Jerry Butler, Patti LaBelle and Ramsey Lewis. But stymied by the industry in the UK, the band went on a hiatus – Scipio and Patterson are adamant today that Cymande never broke up – which ended up lasting 40 years.

However, while Cymande was on the sidelines, his music took on a life of its own. As Return recounts, when DJ Jazzy Jay and other early hip-hop artists in the Bronx began experimenting with using dual turntable setups and dual copies of records to mix and extend tracks, “Bra,” a standout from his self-titled debut Cymande, was one of the most common songs thrown around the decks. By the 80s, legends like The Sugarhill Gang and Gang Starr were trying out the “Bra.” With its infectious, easily isolated groove, the song also infiltrated disco clubs and became a frequent choice for DJs at the dawn of house music. (Paradise Garage visionary Larry Levan he was a fan.) Director Spike Lee also endorsed the band, using “Bra” in 1994 Crooklin and of 2002 25th hour.

“The sampling of the Cymande material started quite early,” says Patterson, though he explains that, “in the early days of sampling, it was hard to know who was doing what because it was a hidden culture.”

But after De La Soul released their seminal 1989 album 3 feet tall and rising, which features the “Bra-sampling” Change In Speak , Scipio's kids turned him on to it—and by extension, the fact that Cymande's music had become a touchstone for artists who followed them. “There was something going on with our music because they were hearing bits of it in the music they were listening to,” he says.

Cymande's publisher, Sony Music Publishing, has helped the band identify the uses of its music and “make sure we're properly rewarded,” says Patterson, with Scipio adding that all sampling issues have been resolved amicably. The sampling was a financial boon (like many Cymande songs, Patterson and Scipio co-wrote “Bra”). Both strongly support sampling in general: “I've always been in favor of it,” says Patterson. “Steve and I regularly say it's good, using creativity to make new things.”

In 2014, fueled in part by decades of support for their music, Cymande returned to the stage in London. MacKenzie-Smith and finally Return Producer/editor Matt Wyllie was at the concert as a fan. Then MacKenzine-Smith, who before Return had made mostly sports films, used Cymande's song “Dove” to open the 2017 documentary about British boxer Anthony Joshua – and a rep for the band got in touch to let him know they'd heard the timing. “We were always like, 'dude, what happened to Cymande?' says the director of his conversations over the years with Wyllie. Having established contact with Cymande's camp, he took his picture and asked to make a documentary about the band: “The only way we were going to find out was to go and make a film about them.”

The film became a labor of love for MacKenzie-Smith, and he embraced “a process of ridiculous research and just obsessing, really,” as he began searching for musicians Cymande had influenced. And when the pandemic hit during production, the logistics of the project became even more daunting. “We always had in mind the history of the band itself,” MacKenzie-Smith said. “When there were those days where you thought, 'We're never going to finish this. Is this [film] will you ever see the light of day?', then we were always like, 'Wait a minute – this is a band that took 40 years off and came back and found themselves with a whole new audience of kids who found them on YouTube. It might take a while, but you'll get there eventually.”

MacKenzie-Smith expects Cymande's story of resilience to resonate similarly with modern audiences. And he also believes it embodies an exciting aspect of consumption in the digital age.

“It's all a double-edged sword, because it's so difficult for artists to actually make money from their art these days – they get such small amounts of money from streaming and everything is available for free on YouTube,” he says. “But ultimately, with this particular story, it actually shows the good in all of it. Everyone will rightly discuss the bad and what needs to be changed. But the good thing about all of this is that a band that thought their time was up has found out that it's not. And kids who are in their teens or early twenties, who might be fans of Khruangbin or whatever, find this band.”

For their part, Patterson and Scipio still admire the continuing influence of Cymande's music. “We're really grateful for their love of music,” Patterson says of the musicians featured in the film, and Scipio calls the process “enlightening … I didn't know the extent to which music was appreciated out there.”

Since reuniting a decade ago, Cymande has released one album (2015's A simple act of faith) and has toured periodically. And with Return promoting them – plus new music in the works and a tour on the go for 2025 – Patterson and Scipio envision a new, fruitful era for Cymande.

“Our goal now is to make sure everything breaks out in 2025,” says Patterson. Laughing, he adds, “We hope to satisfy our fans and the listening public that we weren't wasting our time.”