On The Verge

Red Baraat

Brooklyn, N.Y.
Dhol-n-brass
www.redbaraat.com

Not long after Sunny Jain got married, he started receiving phone calls. For his wedding in 2005, Jain had assembled a traditional Indian marching band, for the baraat processional. “When you go to India, people listen to Punjabi bhangra music and Bollywood film music,” Jain says, and when word spread through New York’s South Asian community that there was a baraat brass band in town, the gigs started coming. Jain, who has spent the past half-decade fusing Indian music with jazz as the drummer and leader of the Sunny Jain Collective, saw an opportunity. Adding a trap kit to his dhol drum and Indian brass, he found something new: a ridiculously ecstatic ensemble. “It’s sort of akin to Afrobeat,” he says of his groove-heavy nine-piece Red Baraat, that mixes traditional bhangra jams, Bollywood covers and new originals on Chaal Baby. “I wanted to have a straight-up primal sound with horns and drums and absolutely no amplified instruments,” he says. Adapted for drums, kerhawa rhythms aren’t too far removed from New Orleans funk, particularly in live settings as Jain and company frequently crowd into already-crowded rooms like Brooklyn’s Barbés. Calling it a party doesn’t quite cut it. But when there’s no room to dance—or march, even—that’s probably the best word.