Sunny Jain grew up in Rochester, New York, watching his scientist father play Indian banjo and harmonium at home, and his parents showed up to every one of his concerts as he came up as a musician. Now Jain, a Rutgers graduate, is bringing his band Wild Wild East to South Orange Performing Arts Center this Friday at 7:30 p.m., performing a project built directly from that family history — one that starts, as Jain tells it during the live show, in 13th century Rajasthan.
Wild Wild East began as a concept album and has grown into an ongoing five-member band, mixing jazz, Bollywood film music, rap, rock and Indian folk music, according to NJ.com. Jain created the project as an homage to his parents' immigrant journey and as a celebration of America's changing cultural mix, per the same report. Smithsonian Folkways Recordings released the album version of Wild Wild East in 2020 — marking Jain's first solo studio album in over a decade, according to a video posted on YouTube.
From Rajasthan to Rochester, a Family's Long Road
The Freight shared a video about the project in a Facebook post by The Freight. Jain has said his parents were initially concerned about his decision to pursue music, per NJ.com's report, but they came around — driving him to competitions in every state and to every orchestra he auditioned for, and never once telling him to stop practicing.
He studied music and math at Rutgers' Mason Gross School of the Arts before playing jazz professionally after college, the outlet reports. Jain went on to learn the Indian dhol, a two-headed folk drum played with sticks and slung around a player's shoulders, and he later played with the Pakistani rock band Junoon. In 2005, he formed a traditional Indian marching band for his own wedding — an experiment that eventually grew into a smaller band combining dhol drumming with New Orleans-style brass.
Red Baraat's Brooklyn Roots
That smaller band became Red Baraat, the Brooklyn-based bhangra brass group Jain founded and led, which has recorded several albums and performed at concert halls and festivals around the world. Hoodline covered a Punjabi brass dance party the group played back in 2016. Jain's Sunny Jain Collective also received an Arts International award to play in India, was designated a U.S. State Department Jazz Ambassador, and toured West Africa, according to NJ.com.
Wild Wild East itself grew out of a direct invitation: Smithsonian Folkways asked Jain to propose a project exploring the Asian and Pacific Islander experience in America, and Wild Wild East became that project. Rather than telling a linear narrative, the album functions as a soundtrack of Jain's family immigrant experience, per NJ.com. During live shows, Jain discusses his ancestors and gives context for each song, and the outlet notes the project has become something of a political statement amid rising polarization about immigrants — with Jain saying immigration has contributed to the United States throughout its history.
National Exposure and an International Tour
The band's profile has grown well beyond New Jersey in recent years. Wild Wild East performed a live NPR Tiny Desk Concert in 2024, according to the World Music Institute. In 2022, the group completed an international tour to Pakistan, headlining the Music Mela in Islamabad and the Lahore Jazz Festival while collaborating with Sufi dhol drummers Nasir Sain Wajdani and Sain Tanveer, shortly after performing on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., the same organization reports.
Jain has also expanded into theater and film. He served as music director for The Jungle, an Obie Award-winning production depicting a Calais refugee camp that memorialized displaced people awaiting passage across the English Channel; the show premiered at St. Ann's Warehouse in Brooklyn in 2019 and returned for an encore run in 2023, per Sunny Jain's own site. He also served as a 2023–2024 Visiting Scholar and Artist-in-Residence at Wesleyan University, developing Love Force, a theatrical music memoir centered on satyagraha and immigrant identity with support from the MAP Fund and New York State Council on the Arts, according to the Conrad. A Complete Unknown is a Bob Dylan biographical film starring Timothée Chalamet.
Why New Jersey, and Why Now
New Jersey makes a fitting backdrop for a project reimagining the American immigrant story: nearly 5% of the state's population is South Asian, giving New Jersey the highest percentage concentration of South Asian residents in the country, according to Indian American Impact. Indian Americans are also part of the broader Asian American population nationwide.
Wild Wild East plays South Orange Performing Arts Center this Friday, September 18, at 7:30 p.m. Tickets range from $40.20 to $54.50, and information is available at sopacnow.org and by phone at (973) 313-2787. SOPAC is located at 1 SOPAC Way in South Orange Village.
