Jun 3, 2025 11:25 AM
In Memoriam: Al Foster, 1943–2025
Al Foster, a drummer regarded for his fluency across the bebop, post-bop and funk/fusion lineages of jazz, died May 28…
“As human beings, when we talk to one another we can come together in one community,” said Sunny Jain, leader of Red Baraat. “To me, that’s the most important thing.”
(Photo: Sachyn Mital)When Red Baraat hits the stage and starts pumping out its ecstatic melange of genre-busting music that fuses 18th century Indian ensembles with Bollywood, Bhangra, Jain devotional songs, New Orleans brass bands and hip-hop born in Brooklyn, it’s a party with a purpose: Bandleader and dhol drummer Sunny Jain is on a mission to break down cultural as well as musical boundaries.
“We’re taking a humanist approach to understanding what’s happening right now,” Jain said, speaking from his home studio in Brooklyn’s Park Slope neighborhood. “Let’s help people who are being marginalized, and help one another come together. As opposed to separating ourselves because we have different religious beliefs, or different politics. We need to get out of our social media silos and engage in real life.”
Multi-culti music explodes from the opening title track of Bhangra Rangeela (Sinj Records), Red Baraat’s first album since 2018’s Sound The People. Climaxing with “Hava Nagila,” played by request at a Muslim-Jewish wedding, it fuses a Pakistani rapper and Sufi singers with Red Baraat’s signature dhol beats and horn blasts. It also sets the tone for the rest of the album, which keeps the party going with epic remixes that includes a star turn from Stewart Copeland.
Red Baraat may be Jain’s most famous incarnation, but he has worn (and wears) many other hats. For nearly a decade before launching Red Baraat, he was an in-demand jazz drummer in New York, where Jain relocated after leaving Rochester, New York, to study music at Rutgers University as well as New York University. He’s also been deeply involved in theater, assembling a baraat wedding band for the Broadway adaptation of Mira Nair’s Monsoon Wedding.
For a man with so many irons in the fire, Jain is remarkably laid-back. Highlights from an animated conversation follow.
Cree McCree: Red Baraat is known for epic live performances. What’s the largest number of musicians you’ve ever had on stage at once?
Sunny Jain: Probably the field recording we did for NPR’s Make Music Day in 2014, when they commissioned me to write a piece that would be played publicly on the steps of the Brooklyn Library. I wrote it to work for all different levels, from beginners to advanced, so literally anyone and everyone could come and play. And 350-plus folks showed up, including the drum lines from the New York Giants and the Knicks.
McCree: How many people are in your core group of musicians? I know you have a big tour coming up this summer pegged to Bhangra Rangeela.
Jain: Ever since the pandemic, it’s been seven people, including me. And we’re a really motley crew. When we roll into a bar or restaurant, people are like, where are these people from?
McCree: There was actually a band called Motley Crüe back in the day.
Jain: Oh, I know Motley Crüe. [laughs] That was my first concert! I was 12 years old. And Whitesnake was opening up for them.
McCree: How has your music evolved since you were a kid? Was dhol your first instrument?
Jain: No, I came to dhol very late, in my 20s. But it’s a sound I grew up with. I’m a child of immigrants. My parents came here in 1970. I’m also the youngest of three siblings, and picked up a lot from them. The middle brother had eclectic taste in music, everything from Bach to Miles Davis to Stevie Wonder to Ice T. My parents listened to Bollywood music and devotional songs from the Jain religion, and we all went to parties where they played Punjabi bhangra music that makes you start moving.
But I fell in love with playing drums when I was 4. As a kid, I was into Crüe, Led Zeppelin, Rush. And when I went to a private teacher and said, “Hey, I wanna learn these rhythms.” He said, “First I wanna show you swing rhythm. I wanna show you bossa nova.” My drum teacher when I was 10 to 18 was a bebop drummer. And that’s how I got involved in jazz.
And for a very long time, those things were very separate. There was jazz, there was pop music, there was my South Asian Indian music. Things only started coming together when I started composing at 19 or 20 and realized that I don’t have to abide by any rules of jazz composition.
McCree: You’ve also been involved in theater.
Jain: I just got commissioned by Soho Repertory Theatre to work on a new piece called Love Force, and it’s focused on bringing people together through music and immersing the crowd in singing and dancing and moving and kind of poking holes at these ways that we divide ourselves.
McCree: You also played drums in the Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown. Were you just on the soundtrack, or did you appear on screen?
Jain: I was actually on camera. In the first five minutes of the film, when Timothy Chalamet is walking through the Village and crosses the street to go to Cafe Wha, I’m out there playing and singing a traditional Jain song. [Director] James Mangold gave me three cameos to let it seep into people’s heads that Dylan’s inspiration for “Mr. Tambourine Man” came from watching this Indian man on the street playing a tambourine and singing a traditional song.
McCree: Circling back to Bhangra Rangeela, is there anything in particular you would like people to take away from it?
Jain: Just the idea of overcoming these fictitious borders governments create. With everything that’s happening in Gaza with the Palestinian people and the Jewish people, and the divisions between India and Pakistan, we still have Indian artists and Pakistani artists on this album, people who are living in Islamabad right now. As human beings, when we talk to one another we can come together in one community. To me, that’s the most important thing. DB
Foster was truly a drummer to the stars, including Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins and Joe Henderson.
Jun 3, 2025 11:25 AM
Al Foster, a drummer regarded for his fluency across the bebop, post-bop and funk/fusion lineages of jazz, died May 28…
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