Occidental Brothers bring Africa to students

By Kevin McKeough, Special to the Tribune

To help raise money for Chicago high school students to travel to Ghana, the Occidental Brothers Dance Band International brought a bit of Ghana to them during the band’s benefit concert at Lincoln Hall Sunday evening.

Composed of local jazz musicians, the Occidental Brothers revive the sounds of classic African pop to gorgeous, hip-swaying effect with the help of singer Samba Mapangala, a star in Africa in the ’80s and ’90s who now lives in the Washington, D.C., area.

Mapangala was on hand for Sunday’s benefit show, which raised funds for an African trip planned for this spring by students and faculty members from Walter Payton College Prep. Most of the crowd consisted of students, teachers and parents, which gave the show a feel of a high school mixer, as the kids alternately danced and milled about in ever-changing clusters.

The band and the cause were well-paired: The Occidental Brothers’ music draws in part on a Ghanaian style called highlife, and guitarist/band leader Nathaniel Braddock has traveled to the West African country to study music there (the band’s previous singer and drummer also were native Ghanaians).

Vampire Weekend’s pastiche of African music and collegiate pop may rule the charts, but the Occidental Brothers’ learned, straightforward approach proved both musically richer and more danceable. Braddock drove the songs with sparkling, intricate patterns full of off-the-beat accents; Greg Ward played bright, propulsive saxophone fanfares; and bassist Joshua Ramos and drummer Makaya McCraven maintained loping, syncopated grooves.

The set list provided a primer on Afropop, as the band opened with Zimbabwean icon Thomas Mapfumo’s “Nyarai,” and later played Congolese guitar innovator Jean Bosco Mwenda’s gorgeous instrumental ballad “Masanga.”

Performing his own hits, such as “Malako Disco,” Mapangala sang in a mix of Kenyan and Congolese languages, his light, lilting tenor rising into calls that carried like wind across a field. The music reached a heated crescendo on “Vunja Mifupa,” as Mapangala unleashed a torrent of rapid-fire chants while Ward vamped and the rhythm section dug deep into the groove.

Only a few students will be making the Ghana trip, but while the Occidental Brothers played, far more were transported.

source: Chicago Tribune