Music: Sunny Jain’s Wild Wild East

Called “One of the leading figures in North America’s burgeoning Asian music scene. A global musical alchemist and cultural agent provocateur” by Songlines (UK), Sunny Jain is a composer, drummer, dhol player and thought leader.

Sunny Jain’s Wild Wild East, encompasses a myriad facets of Jain’s identity and sonically paints the journey of his own family’s immigration story. He sources musical inspiration from the scores of Bollywood classics, Punjabi folk traditions, jazz improvisation, and rollicking psychedelic styles. His 5 piece band (drums, vocals, sax, guitar, bass) delivered a fiery NPR Tiny Desk Concert in 2024 and followed it up with an electric live KEXP session in 2025. They toured North America appearing at the iconic Monterey Jazz Festival, Calgary Jazz Festival, Victoria Jazz Festival, The Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, National Museum of Asian Art, and the historic Bryant Park in NYC. In 2022, the band made a milestone tour to Pakistan headlining Music Mela in Islamabad, the Lahore Jazz Festival and performing with master Sufi dhol drummers Nasir Sain Wajdani and Sain Tanveer. Just months prior to that, Sunny Jain’s Wild Wild East performed on the National Mall in Washington D.C. for the renowned Smithsonian Folklife Festival.

While growing up with a deep cultural connection to his South Asian heritage, Sunny Jain also fell in love with jazz music and prog rock. His eclectic musical upbringing has brought him to perform with percussion legends Mickey Hart & Zakir Hussain and Planet Drum, to pop icons Ed Sheeran, David Byrne, Jon Batiste and Italian Pop Star Jovanotti, to many jazz luminaries. He has been at the zeitgeist of America’s South Asian sounds for the past 2 decades. He founded and plays dhol in the pioneering Brooklyn band, Red Baraat, and has drummed with some of the top South Asian artists out there (Ali Sethi, Ganavya, Arooj Aftab, Vijay Iyer, DJ Rekha, Heems, Karsh Kale and Junoon). He was the music producer for Mira Nair’s Monsoon Wedding Musical, and premiered his first theatrical show, Love Force, in 2026 as part of the Under The Radar Festival.

Sunny Jain – drumset, dhol
Ben Parag – vocals
Alison Shearer – alto saxophone, flute
Shubh Saran – guitar
Almog Sharvit – bass