Red Baraat

Eight-piece dhol and brass ensemble Red Baraat hail from Brooklyn, New York. (The dhol is a large hand-held drum with two heads meant to be played on both the top and bottom; the dance drum in Punjabi music, it's heard in virtually all music from Bollywood.) The group's sound is an amalgam of South Asian wedding bands, pop, bhangra funk, big-band jazz, Balkan wedding music, and the sounds of New Orleans brass bands. Red Baraat were founded by dhol player Sunny Jain in 2008. His previous band, the Sunny Jain Collective, included in its lineup future jazz pioneers Vijay Iyer, Rudresh Mahanthappa, and Rez Abbasi. The new group's sound stands in sharp contrast to the more genre-specific SJC brand of carnatic jazz. Red Baraat's instrumentation includes the dhol, other percussion, two trumpets (one of them a bass trumpet), trombone, sousaphone, and baritone and soprano saxophones. The band's first effort was 2009's Chaal Baby, issued on the independent Sinj label. It was followed by relentless national touring that saw the band perform marathon shows at small clubs, the White House, and the Bonnaroo festival. Red Baraat's second album, Shruggy Ji, was released in January of 2013 and reached number one on the Billboard World Albums chart. Gaadi of Truth followed in 2015 and also landed on the World Albums chart. Their next release, the 2016 EP Livewire, captured a performance at the KEXP studio in Seattle that incorporated electric guitar and live effects on some of the acoustic instruments. The ensemble's fourth full-length, Bhangra Pirates, arrived via Rhyme & Reason in 2017. ~ Thom Jurek