Whether performing on the National Mall in DC for the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, or in the foothills of the Himalayas in Pakistan for 10,000 people, Sunny Jain’s Wild Wild East (Smithsonian Folkways) is a band that creates hypnotic rhythms that intertwine with Hindustani vocals, saxophone and guitar. Drawing from his own family’s immigration story, Jain recasts the immigrant—steeped in the courage to leave a familiar homeland for a new beginning—as the modern-day cowboy and cowgirl. Jain sources musical inspiration from the scores of Bollywood classics and Spaghetti Westerns, Punjabi folk traditions and jazz. 

Sunny Jain is a composer, drummer, dhol player and thought leader. He is the founder and lead force behind the pioneering band, Red Baraat. In 2022, Jain joined Planet Drum, playing alongside drumming legends Mickey Hart, Zakir Hussain, and Giovanni Hidalgo. 

Sunny Jain - drumset, dhol
Ben Parag - vocals
Alison Shearer - saxophones, flute
Shubh Saran - guitar
Almog Sharvit - bass

“Sunny Jain, the drummer who leads the Red Baraat brass band, vastly expands his palette on ‘Wild Wild East,’ a furiously propulsive song. Bollywood meets New Orleans, new age, rock and whatever else it takes to make this five-minute track hurtle forward with a new fusion at every junction.” - The New York Times

Best Albums of 2020. 5/5 star review. “Epic in every sense. One of the leading figures in North America’s burgeoning Asian music scene. A global musical alchemist and cultural agent provocateur.” - Songlines (UK)

“The indefatigable drummer and dhol player Sunny Jain is an unrepentant maximalist-were he a visual artist, one imagines bright-hued paints splattered across his canvas, his floor, and perhaps his ceiling. Think of a genre, and it’s probably somewhere in his compositions, yet the musician’s hullabaloo stands on considered conceptual ground.” - The New Yorker

Photo credit: Ebru Yildiz

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