Jumping from the abrasive sounds of postpunk rock to the sweetness of West African highlife music might seem an enormous leap, but for Occidental Brothers Dance Band International leader Nathaniel Braddock, it was also an entirely natural step.

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As the Chicago-based guitarist tells it, he was a bored and alienated teen in small-town Michigan when he first heard African music on his local public-radio station, and he was immediately hooked.

“It's a little bit hard for me to put words to, but when you connect with something, with a piece of music or a musician, it's almost like you find a piece of yourself,” he recalls, checking in from his Windy City apartment. “Even if, on the surface, it has no immediate point of cultural reference, it somehow explains something that you feel.”

It's not that Braddock has entirely forsaken the music he was listening to at the time. The Occidental Brothers cover New Order's 1986 electro-pop hit “Bizarre Love Triangle” on their recently released long-player Odo Sanbra, and subtle hints of Sonic Youth–style guitar distortion occasionally surface in their leader's playing. But for the past two decades, Braddock has been immersed in the music of his adopted culture, travelling and studying in West Africa, collecting records from that region, and performing with members of Chicago's large community of African expatriate musicians.

New Order covers aside, the Occidental Brothers' music wouldn't have sounded entirely out of place emanating from an Accra jukebox, circa 1975; Ghanaian-born singer-trumpeter Kofi Cromwell and drummer Daniel “Rambo” Asamoah take care of that. But Braddock stresses that the Brothers aren't just a tribute band, and Odo Sanbra bears that out. Andrew Bird joins the troupe for a couple of tunes, including the Gold Coast classic “Masanga”, which strikes a beautiful balance between palm-wine guitar music and Anglo-Celtic fiddling; meanwhile, saxophonist Greg Ward and bassist Joshua Ramos reflect their own training in jazz and Latin music, respectively.

“Our sound is an expression of who we all are as individuals,” Braddock points out.

That sound is also refreshingly upbeat, which seems especially important at a time when so much music seems suspicious of joy.

“You know, it is really happy music, and we're very happy when we're playing,” Braddock says. “But that doesn't mean that we have a Pollyanna view of the world. It's more like, ‘Well, we need to get happy here, because there's a lot in our world that is going to make us unhappy.'

“Making music is really about creating a space and creating a community in that moment,” he adds. “So it can be very important to celebrate what is good about life—especially when there's a lot that's not worth celebrating.”