Wild Wild East

Born in New York in 1975 to Punjabi immigrants, Jain has become a leading figure in North America's burgeoning Asian music scene, drumming with Junoon, founding the Brooklyn bhangra band Red Baraat and playing dhol on records by everyone from Norah Jones to the rapper Q-Tip. Inspired by the myth of a new frontier populated by cowboys, Native Americans and now Indian immigrants, Wild Wild East is conceived as his major statement in which he discovers a complex and heterodox musical identity of ‘South Asian American-ness.’ Galloping spaghetti western grooves are driven by Punjabi folk drums. Bhangra meets rock psychedelia. Jazz horns and electric guitars mix with the Indian shehnai (double reed) and Rajasthani rhythms.

On ‘Red, Brown, Black’, the Muslim rapper Haseeb questions a long historical chain of racial stereotypes and who is the ‘native’ and who is the ‘invader.’ Bollywood film songs are embellished with surf guitars and the album concludes with ‘Brooklyn Dhamal’, a thundering post-punk wall of distorted sound like an Asian version of Sonic Youth. Epic in every sense, Wild Wild East deserves to puts Jain up there alongside Nitin Sawhney as a global musical alchemist and cultural agent provocateur.