Review: ’70s British soul band heats up Varsity Theater in Minneapolis

Is it a hip-hop-fueled comeback or a case of everything old is new again?

Whatever it was, there was special excitement Wednesday night at the Varsity Theater in Minneapolis. It was the return to the United States for Cymande, a British soul band that had a brief run in the 1970s and got rediscovered by hip-hop producers in the late ‘80s and later. Now the recently regrouped Cymande (pronounced “sih-MANH-day”) has dropped its first widely released album in decades along with a documentary film discussing its history and influence.

At the Varsity, Cymande impressed as a refreshing bass-driven groove machine delivering an irresistible mélange of Afro-Caribbean soul, jazz and reggae. After 90 minutes, it was hard to tell who was more delighted — the few hundred fans or the nine Cymande musicians, who seemed genuinely thrilled by the response, especially on a frigid night with below-zero wind chills.

“We’ve been off the scene for a long time,” guitarist Patrick Patterson said in the middle of the show. “We made a little mistake: We came [here] at the wrong time of the year. It’s cold.”

When Cymande called it quits in 1974 after making a ripple in the U.K. with three albums in three years, Patterson and co-leader Steve Scipio left London for the Caribbean and became lawyers. Scipio was the attorney general for Anguilla for seven years.

Never underestimate music fans as one of them helped hip-hop artists to rediscover Cymande. Producer Prince Paul remembered the band’s tune “Bra” from his childhood and sampled it on the 1989 De La Soul track “Change in Speak.” Others including Wu-Tang Clan and Sugarhill Gang sampled Cymande and most famously, the Fugees’ used Cymande’s “Dove” on “The Score.” Scipio and Patterson, now in their 70s, learned about Cymande’s second life from their hip-hop-loving children.

A 2015 comeback album, “A Simple Act of Faith,” didn’t gain traction but momentum started with last year’s documentary “Getting It Back: The Story of Cymande” and continued with the January release of the new album “Renascence,” featuring the sole original members, bassist Scipio and guitarist Patterson, and the current U.S. tour.

While “Renascence” provided only three of the 13 tunes on Wednesday, it became clear that Cymande must have sounded way cool in 1973 with its prominent bass, jazzy horns, Afro-Caribbean percussion and hypnotic-as-reggae grooves. There were political messages although at times it was more about a spirit such as on “The Message,” during which the band slipped in a chorus of Bob Marley’s “Get Up, Stand Up,” horn lines that evoked Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire” and a repeated refrain by lead singer Raymond Simpson of “music is a message and the message is music.”

The “Renascence” material fit in seamlessly, most notably “Chasing an Empty Dream” with its liquid grooves floating like funk. Even the night’s hardest funk number, the encore of “It’s Magic,” swung like a medium tempo treatment of Kool & the Gang’s “Ladies Night.” That’s the thing about Cymande’s music, it grooves, rather than bangs, in endlessly soulful ways.