Photo: Ebru Yildiz

Talented and acclaimed Indian-American composer and dhol player Sunny Jain, also known as the founder and bandleader of Red Baraat, has announced the release of a new album. Entitled Wild Wild East and set for release on February 21st through Smithsonian Folkways, it marks his first solo album in a decade and will also be his first for the label. The album incorporates influences aplenty as the press release describes, “from the scores of Bollywood classics to Spaghetti Westerns, Indian folk to jazz improvisation, and South Asian languages to English prose to express the immigrant experience as one navigates the terrain of what it means to be “American.””

Following the mighty first single, ‘Immigrant Warrior’, Jain has now shared the title track, a song about migration, as he explains:

“A story that everyone has in their family, whether it be 100 years old or in recent times. This song is about my lineage from Osian, Rajasthan to Sialkot, Punjab to the 1947 partition of India, and then the eventual move to America. The courageousness of all immigrants to leave their family and home in search of opportunity in a foreign land is a wild and bold move. One that truly embodies the romanticized ideas the cowboy has always professed to be.”

‘Wild Wild East’ comes with an accompanying video directed by Adeel Ahmed and filmed in Manhattan, Queens, Hawaii, Los Angeles, New Delhi, Old Delhi, Agra, Rajasthan, and Madhya Pradesh. Watch it below and listen to ‘Immigrant Warrior’ straight after.