Sunny Jain, the Brooklyn-based musician, composer, and bandleader of Red Baraat, will be releasing his new solo album, Wild Wild East with Smithsonian Folkways on February 21st, 2020. It is the first release in our Asian Pacific America Series.

Wild Wild East explores the symbolism and romanticism surrounding immigration and American cowboys from the perspective of people of color in the United States. “The idea was to address the cowboy mentality that we people of color — whether you’re red, brown, or black — face,” Jain says. “The cowboy is this sheriff that you witness throughout American history, from the Wild West to the cops today, but if I were the native, if I were the African American, it’s like, ‘This cowboy is coming to shoot me down.’ This is not romantic to me at all.”

His first single “Immigrant Warrior” is an ode the strength of immigrants. As the son of immigrants from India, Jain fuses the experiences of his parents and his own with various styles of Indian and American music into one song. When BrooklynVegan premiered “Immigrant Warrior,” they described the song as “the middle ground between a Western score and a Bollywood score, with a little free jazz in the mix too… where they sound like one focused style of music.”

Sunny Jain’s music calls for the recognition of a changing world that values the beauty in diversity, redefining the face and nature of the American cowboy. Pre-order Wild Wild East on CD, LP, or digitally now.

Wild Wild East is the first release in the Smithsonian Folkways’ Asian Pacific America series, which features exceptional contemporary voices and sonic expressions across diverse musical genres. Whether reinterpreting traditional repertoire and styles or speaking directly to collective experiences through song, the artists in the series expand the American soundscape through their creative explorations of identity, community, and diaspora. This series supported in part through Federal funds from the Asian Pacific American Initiatives pool administered by the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center.