To say the Occidental Brothers Dance Band International plays
African music is accurate, but rather vague. Considering that Africa is
the world’s second-largest continent and contains dozens of countries
and countless musical styles, that’s a broad generalization.

“That’d be like saying Led Zeppelin plays European music,” chuckles
Nathaniel Braddock, guitarist and leader of the Chicago-based band. “Or
saying someone plays North American music. I mean, you probably
wouldn’t be a mariachi musician and get up and play with Van
Halen.”

Braddock says the Occidental Brothers perform only a small portion
of African music, and it primarily comes from Central and West
Africa—countries such as Ghana, the Congo and, to a lesser
degree, Zimbabwe. The band’s repertoire features a captivating mixture
of styles such as soukous, highlife, rumba and dry guitar.

The Occidental Brothers Dance Band International will visit Tucson
for the first time to play Saturday, June 20, at Solar Culture
Gallery.

Braddock is a veteran player in Chicago jazz and indie-rock
circles—with such acts as Ancient Greeks, the Zincs and Edith
Frost—and he teaches African guitar at the city’s Old Town School
of Folk Music. He says the Occidental Brothers formed naturally from
the love of West African music he shares with students and
colleagues.

“I had been listening to African guitar music for many years, and I
started teaching it, and eventually, a band grew out of my classes,” he
says, speaking on the phone from his home in Chicago.

“It started out simply, with me, a sax player, a congo player and an
upright bass player. We started out doing ’60s Congolese music. At
first, we mostly did cover versions of the classic tunes, by people
like Mwenda Jean Bosco, Franco and Bantous de la Capitale.”

The group’s self-titled debut album—released independently in
2007 and distributed by Thrill Jockey Records—primarily features
that material.

The Occidental Brothers continued evolving, and two native Ghanaian
musicians became enamored with the group and enlisted. Singer Kofi
Cromwell and percussionist Daniel “Rambo” Asamoah, both members of the
popular Ghanaian highlife band Western Diamonds, bring firsthand
experience to the Occidental Brothers sound.

“Kofi and Rambo have really helped us change and grow, and they have
helped us realize where we wanted to go with this group,” Braddock
says.

Although the group sometimes grows larger, there are five main
Occidental Brothers. The group includes bassist Josh Ramos, who has
played with Liquid Soul, and sax player Greg Ward, whose experience
includes sessions and live dates with such artists as Hamid Drake,
Ernest Dawkins and the Chicago Afro-Latin Jazz Ensemble.

The band had a busy 2008, playing shows with Afropop legend Oliver
Mtukudzi and singer-songwriter Andrew Bird, and appearing at many
festivals and showcases. The Occidental Brothers also collaborated with
Samba Mapangala on the song “Obama Ubarikiwe,” a tune praising
then-presidential candidate Barack Obama that became a viral Internet
hit.

The Occidental Brothers released their second album, Odo
Sanbra, in April. Among its hypnotic and sexy West African-derived
dance tunes is a cover of the New Order song “Bizarre Love Triangle.”
Braddock discovered that the chord progression in the ’80s modern-rock
hit was very similar to that of the older highlife style known as
sikyi, so he taught it to the band.

In the music of the Occidental Brothers, one is likely to hear
echoes of jazz melodies and Latin rhythms. This is not a calculated
move, Braddock says, but a natural result of the cross-pollination that
is essential to the way music travels the world.

“African music goes to the New World hundreds of years ago and
becomes something else—blues, jazz, rock, Afro-Cuban
music—and then is imported back to Africa and influences what has
been happening there in the meantime. I mean, (Nigerian Afrobeat
pioneer) Fela Kuti is heavily influenced by James Brown.”

Braddock, who is in his mid-30s, says he grew up in Michigan
listening to jazz artists such as John Coltrane, indie pop acts such as
The Smiths (mostly because of guitarist Johnny Marr) and avant-garde
rockers like Sonic Youth. “I just wanted to hear something other than
the usual Bob Seger,” he says.

Eventually, his insatiable musical hunger drew him to Afropop.

He says he found Afropop guitar similar to the music of Coltrane,
Marr and Sonic Youth in one important way: “They all approach their
instruments and creating music from unique perspectives,” he says.

As much as Braddock loves the music of Africa, he didn’t visit the
continent until he already was an adult. It was a trip to Ghana, and he
can’t wait to go back, but his current commitments are growing. He
hopes to return at the end of this year.

Actually, Braddock credits the Chicago Public Library system with
helping to broaden his musical tastes.

“I’m talking about the LP era. When I was going to the library, they
had some CDs, but most of their music holdings were all LPs. In
Chicago’s Harold Washington Library, I found such a rich assortment of
music treasures that you can’t find even on the Internet. I found some
amazing things.”

This article appears in Jun 18-24, 2009.