Cymande — Cymande (1972)
Cymande (1972), centred on the timeless power of “The Message” — a perfect Old Music Friday tune and the heartbeat of one of funk’s most soulful, spiritual debut albums.
By Rafi Mercer
There are debut albums that announce themselves with noise, swagger and ambition — and then there are albums like Cymande, released in 1972 by a group of Afro-Caribbean musicians living in London, who seemed to drift into the studio with nothing but instinct, heritage and a groove so natural it felt like muscle memory. The result is one of the most quietly influential funk-soul records ever made: warm, unhurried, spiritual, and built on rhythms older than the city it was recorded in.
Cymande isn’t an album that shouts. It glides. It carries itself with the kind of internal confidence that doesn’t need polish or theatrics. And at the centre of it — the pulse, the anchor, the track that has carried the album across decades — is “The Message.” If Old Music Friday needed a signature tune, this would be it.
“The Message” is one of those rare pieces of music where everything is working in calm alignment. The bassline doesn’t push; it leans. The guitars sit like flickers of light. The congas chatter beneath everything like a hidden conversation. And Ray King’s vocals — almost prayerful in their restraint — turn the chorus into something closer to wisdom than lyric. It’s funk, but funk learned through diaspora memory. It’s soul, but soul built from lived experience rather than heartbreak theatrics. It’s groove, but groove that breathes rather than demands.
And this is what makes the whole album so unusual. Cymande weren’t copying American funk; they were filtering Caribbean identity, London street energy, jazz discipline and Rastafari consciousness into a sound they called Nyah-Rock. When producer John Schroeder discovered them, he knew the industry wouldn’t understand it — but he also knew it was powerful. The band cut the record at De Lane Lea Studios in 1971, and what they captured was a hybrid that didn’t belong to any one culture. As a result, Cymande travelled — quietly, steadily, effortlessly.
Beyond “The Message,” the album is full of slow-burning brilliance: the hypnotic build of “Dove,” the swagger of “Bra,” the drifting warmth of “Listen” and “Rickshaw.” But it’s that opening track that feels like the gateway into the whole world of the record. Every Friday, when people are tired of speed and noise, when they’re looking for something that shifts the energy rather than adds to it, “The Message” seems to step forward as if it knows its purpose.
This is why Cymande is such a perfect Old Music Friday album. Not because it’s old — but because it’s free. It was made before algorithms and marketing cycles, before everything needed to be optimised, tightened, formatted. These musicians played as if someone had given them permission to build a world, not a product. And 50 years later, the world they built still stands.
You feel it when the needle drops: that gentleness, that spaciousness, that quiet spiritual confidence that only comes from music made without fear. And once “The Message” settles into the room, the rest of the album unfurls like a conversation you've just remembered you were part of.
On a Friday evening, when the week has left its mark and the world feels slightly too loud, Cymande does something quietly miraculous — it restores the rhythm. It reminds you that groove doesn’t need volume, that soul doesn’t need suffering, that funk doesn’t need flash. All it needs is intention, heritage, and a little bit of air.
Put on “The Message” tonight and you’ll understand why this album has travelled across oceans and decades without ageing a day. Some music fades. Some music fights. And some, like this, simply flows — carrying you with it.
Rafi Mercer writes about the spaces where music matters.
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