eJazzNews Archive

Sunny Jain: Taboo (Brooklyn Jazz Underground Records, 2010)

Originally published on eJazzNews · · By Glenn Astarita · CD Reviews

On May 20, 2010, eJazzNews published Glenn Astarita’s review of Taboo, the fourth album as a leader by New York drummer Sunny Jain, released on Brooklyn Jazz Underground Records. Astarita called it a top pick for 2010. Jain also leads the Brooklyn bhangra band Red Baraat, founded in 2008, and in 2020 released Wild Wild East on Smithsonian Folkways.

What the review said

Astarita heard Taboo as a festive meeting of Indian music and jazz built on dance rhythms. He singled out the pairing of electric guitarist Nir Felder and pianist Marc Cary, whose lead lines he described as blending electric and acoustic textures, and said the South Asian vocals often carried the program. He found no filler across the album’s seven pieces and praised Jain’s control of dynamics and his precise drumming beneath the raga-based material, concluding that the album stood apart from the many genre-crossing jazz projects of the time.

The review listed the full lineup: Jain on drum set and dhol, Cary on piano, Felder on guitar, Gary Wang on acoustic bass, singers Achyut Joshi, Sheetal Karhade, Samita Sinha, Shayna Steele and Sachal Vasandani, and YaliniDream on spoken word.

One point needs correcting. The review described the ghazal as an ancient poetic form for tackling social justice. In Jain’s own account of the project, ghazals are love poems that originated in the Arabian Peninsula and reached India in the 12th century. He took the form as his artistic starting point but set texts by modern poets and lyricists, among them Ali Mir, Vikram Seth, Kishwar Naheed, Ifti Nasim and Erin Thomas, to address subjects he said were often treated as taboo in South Asian communities: sexual orientation, inequality and violence against women, and the meeting of religions.

About the album

Taboo (Brooklyn Jazz Underground Records, BJUR 016) was recorded at Water Music in Hoboken, New Jersey, and a studio in Bushwick, Brooklyn, and was mixed by Scotty Hard. Its seven tracks include “Jack and Jill,” “Ye Mera Khuda,” “Two Ladies,” “We Sinful Women” and the short closer “Samaro Mantra.” A release show was announced for Joe’s Pub in New York on June 10, 2010. The liner notes credit support from the Aaron Copland Fund for Music. It followed his Sunny Jain Collective albums As Is (2002), Mango Festival (2004) and Avaaz (2006).

What happened next

By the time Taboo came out, Jain was already leading Red Baraat, which mixes bhangra rhythm on the dhol with brass, funk, go-go and jazz. Its debut, Chaal Baby, appeared in 2010, followed by albums including Shruggy Ji (2013) and Bhangra Pirates (2017), and the band played NPR’s Tiny Desk in 2012 and 2017. On February 21, 2020, Smithsonian Folkways released Wild Wild East, his first album under his own name since Taboo, and the band of that name recorded its own Tiny Desk concert in 2024. Jain has also written two instructional books for Alfred Publishing, The Total Jazz Drummer and Drum Atlas: India. For more on the instrument, see our guide to jazz drummers.

Where to start listening

  • Taboo (Brooklyn Jazz Underground, 2010): the album reviewed here, with Marc Cary and Nir Felder.
  • Chaal Baby (SinJ, 2010): Red Baraat’s debut.
  • Wild Wild East (Smithsonian Folkways, 2020): Jain’s later solo project.

Sources

This page is based on an article from the original eJazzNews archive (2001 to 2018), with background and sources added in 2026. The original text is not republished here. You can read the original as it appeared on eJazzNews via the Internet Archive.
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