Red Ryder Entertainment

Chicago's Occidental Brothers Dance Band Int'l are pleased to announce a new collaboration with Congolese music legend, the great Samba Mapangala! Playing the best-loved songs from both artists' repertoires, the group is now also playing new songs that fuse together all their strengths.

The Occidental Brothers' blend of high-energy soukous, rootsy Ghananian Highlife and African Jazz conjures sounds of the golden age of the African guitar band and has made them favorites of of music critics and devotees of the style, but it's a sound that has also seduced an audience of listeners as diverse as the members of this multi-racial band. The group is led by guitarist Nathaniel Braddock, an instructor at Chicago's Old Town School of Folk Music and twice profiled in Guitar Player Magazine. Braddock is joined by jazz phenom Greg Ward on alto, Joshua Ramos on bass and Makaya McCraven on drums. After playing the Pitchfork festival in 2008 and GlobalFest in January 2009, the OBDBI experienced a meteoric rise–graduating from Chicago street festivals to the stages of Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, the Montreal and Vancouver Jazz Festivals in the course of a year.

Congolese singer Samba Mapangala is one of the true legends of African music. In the 1970's he traveled from Kinshasa with his group Les Kinois to the Kenyan capital of Nairobi where he rebuilt the group as Virunga. For twenty years Mapangala and Virunga were the kings of the East African music scene, recording countless hits, many included on the cd “Virunga Volcano”, recognized in the book “World Music: 100 Essential CDs” by Simon Broughton. He sings in the mellifluous, but rhythmically complex style of the Congolese singers, but sings in Swahili as much as his native Lingala.

The first OBDBI/Mapangala collaboration was the greatly-applauded tribute song “Obama Ubarikiwe” in celebration of the aspiring presidential candidate, and a favorite son of Chicagoans and Africans alike.  Mapangala and the OBDBI began performing together in the fall of 2009, and have recently begun recording music for release in 2010.

The band is currently booking 2010 performances in North America, Africa, and Europe.

Profile of OBDBI guiarist in December 2009 Guitar Player Magazine of the Occidental Brothers' first cd:

"This disc convinces me that the greatest African dance band on the planet this year hails from Chicago."

-Norman Weinstein, The BEAT vol 26 no 3

Best World Music Group, 2008

-Chicago Reader's Best of 2008 

"You could easily believe the tracks on this very sharp cd were recorded in Kinshasa or Accra years ago rather than quite recently in Chicago...OBDBI offer up simply stunning instrumentals recalling the golden ages of rumba, highlife and other African styles"

-T. Orr, World Music Central, 12 May 2007

of the Occidental Brothers second cd "Odo Sanbra":

"Kudos to OBDBI for honoring nearly-forgotten African styles with an inventive, contemporary spirit.The band's second outing is a potent balance of revival and reinvention." 

- Banning Eyre, Afropop.org, 29 May 2009

"Led by Nathaniel Braddock, a Michigan history prof's son who mastered highlife guitar to signify his distance from the other kids in his Dow Chemical town, and featuring two members of the Western Diamonds, the biggest Ghanaian highlife band of the '90s, proof that preservationism can be fun. Stopping off for an idiomatic cover of New Order's "Bizarre Love Triangle" (wherein Braddock noticed a sikyi progression) and finishing with the '20s chestnut "Yaa Amponsah" (whereof Braddock tracked down an original 78), it's tuneful like all great highlife is tuneful--with Chicago saxman about town Greg Ward taking the hooky second guitar parts, maybe more. Chicago bassist Joshua Ramos is the anchor-for-hire, Kofi Cromwell sings lovely and blows his own horn, Andrew Bird contributes a violin cameo, and Asamoah Rambo is the rare African who knows his way around a trap set. Like they say so much more often than is true--sweet. A-"

-Robert Christgau, Robert Christgau's Consumers' Guide 

"On Odo Sanbra, Occidental Brothers Dance Band International earn a place alongside their highlife forebears by doing their own thing with the music and emerging with a sound that pays tribute to the past while moving the form forward. Having two genuine highlife stars in the band certainly helps, but everybody pulls his weight-- Braddock has a true grasp of West African guitar styles, bassist Joshua Ramos gets the bounce and swing of the music, and Ward has a brilliant sense of phrasing and flow. If highlife is going to get the revival it deserves, it could scarcely ask for better ambassadors."

-Joe Tangari, Pitchfork.com, 3 June 2009