Derrick “Duckie” Simpson was in his early twenties when he and two friends — Garth Dennis and Don Carlos — went into a Jamaican recording studio to record their version of “Romancing to the Folk Song,” a song written by American singer/songwriter Curtis Mayfield and first recorded as an album track by Mayfield’s group, the Impressions.

Simpson and his friends recorded as Black Sounds Uhuru — “uhuru” translating from Swahili, one of the major languages of East Africa, as “freedom.”

That first recording didn’t hit. They made a second. It didn’t hit either and they went their separate ways. All three were destined to achieve stardom.

Simpson revived Black Sounds Uhuru with new partners and made more recordings. As things started rolling for them he renamed the group Black Uhuru. More than 35 years after that historic name change, Black Uhuru is coming to Hawaii for two nights at the Blue Note Hawaii, followed by a one-nighter March 8 in Honokaa.

“Nobody expected it would be this long; nobody expected it,” Simpson said with a hearty chuckle, on the phone from Chico, Calif., his temporary base of operations away from his home in Jamaica.

Simpson has kept Black Uhuru on track through departures and reunions, a Grammy Award (Best Reggae Album, 1985), other members’ visa problems, and more departures; American-born Sandra “Puma” Jones, a member of the “classic” 1980 Black Uhuru, left due to health problems and subsequently died of cancer.

The biggest challenge in recent years came when Simpson discovered that the master files for “As the World Turns,” the album that he had intended to release in 2012, had been corrupted and could not be restored.

“I had to re-record the whole project,” he said. “I just sang them all again.”

The newly re-recorded “As the World Turns” was released in September.

SIMPSON LEADS the group in addressing issues traditional in authentic reggae music — social and political issues, love shared between men and women and the religious doctrines of the Rastafari faith. For instance, on a song titled “Spectrum” he shares the observation,“The more you live/ The more you learn. The more you give/ The more you get burned.”

Pessimism or realism? Simpson says it’s the latter.

He gives Americans something to think about with the lyrics of “War Crime.” They include the names of world leaders who could be considered criminal — Mengistu Haile Mariam, the man responsible for the death of Haile Selassie in 1975, to name one. However, some of those name-checked died as a result of American policies that would be defined as “war crimes” if the leaders of the United States were held to the same standards that were applied to the defeated Germans in 1945.

“You gotta read through the lines,” Simpson said, regarding the lyrics and some of the men he mentions. “It’s ‘war crimes.’ You got to read through the lines. It’s all this guys — Mengistu, the African leader who said he overthrow Selassie. (Robert) Mugabe, Saddam (Hussein). (Muammar) Gaddafi. Gaddafi was a complex man. He did not deserve to die that way.”

The former leader of Libya was brutally executed after he was captured by rebel forces supported by the United States and NATO in 2011.

Instead of overthrowing Gaddafi under the pretext of protecting protesters on the far side of Libya, “We could have been concerned about our people here in the United States more,” Simpson said, “because people are suffering in the United States.”

Black Uhuru plays homage to the past — to Jamaican history and to the group’s genesis — with another song on the album: “Jamaican Herbman” is the band’s reworking of a song Richie Havens wrote and first recorded as an album track on his third album, “Richard P. Havens, 1983,” in 1968.

“Richie Havens did it as ‘Indian Rope Man,’” Simpson explained. “Bob Marley did it as ‘African Herbman,’ and now Black Uhuru has done it as ‘Jamaican Herb Man.’ It’s all the same song, but it was originally by Richie Havens.”

WITH A body of work that goes back almost 50 years, Simpson says that the best way to get into the music of Black Uhuru is to start with whatever recording you find first, be it “The World Goes Round” or that first Black Sounds Uhuru single, or the elaborate four-disc box set that a boutique record label built around the Grammy-winning album, “Anthem,” and released as a limited edition project in 2004.

“That (original) CD ‘Anthem’ was one of my favorites; there are so many favorites — ‘Showcase,’ ‘Sinsemilla’,” Simpson said, mentioning two other early Black Uhuru albums. “You can start with the first one you get. Whichever one is available you could start with that, that you could research, and then get the others.”

Bob Marley inspired his very first recording.

“Bob used to do Curtis Mayfield also, so that’s where we got that vibe from,” Simpson said. “‘He’s doing Curtis — we need to do one too,’ and that was our first shot.”

Simpson and Mayfield never met. Mayfield died in 1999.

On the lighter side of things, Simpson said that he tolerates non-Jamaicans who affect faux-Jamaican accents, and that he does so for a very simple reason.

“I can’t do … about that,” he said with another hearty laugh. “It doesn’t bother me.”