Red Baraat @ GAMH (wed) w/ The John Brothers Piano Company

“We feel comfortable not knowing exactly where we’re headed,” says Red Baraat’s founder and bandleader Sunny Jain. “We’re very much about trying things out and taking risks. Sometimes it doesn’t work,” he laughs, “and sometimes we stumble upon things that are really exciting.”

Landing squarely in the latter category is Gaadi of Truth, the third and latest full- length studio effort from the New York dhol and brass ensemble. While still retaining many of the propulsive and uplifting musical elements that fired their first two albums, 2010’s Chaal Baby and 2012’s Shruggy Ji — and which led NPR to famously dub Red Baraat “The best party band in years” — Gaadi of Truth is an even deeper affair, both instrumentally and conceptually.

“When we originally started in 2008, the group was going to be rooted in Punjabi music,” Jain explains. Born and raised in Rochester, NY as a first generation Indian American, Jain drew upon his early musical education for the concept of Red Baraat. “I grew up hearing Indian classical music and devotional songs at home,” he recalls, “and my dad was always listening to 1960s Bollywood music on reel to reel. For Red Baraat, I really wanted a large band with a massive sound, but just drums and horns. The horns were really looking back at the brass band tradition of India, which was something I’d grown up with and seen since I was five years old. I wanted to put the dhol drum in front — the dhol is the dance drum of northern India, which you also hear in the film music of Bollywood — and fuse it with the Punjabi rhythms and the Indian brass band tradition. But Red Baraat wasn’t intended to just be a replica of an Indian brass band, it wasn’t intended to be any one thing. I was specifically looking for a diverse cast of players that were going to bring something else to the music.”

As Gaadi of Truth reveals, Red Baraat’s sound has broadened considerably over the past six years, expanding to embrace digital and electronic flourishes alongside the band’s original acoustic underpinnings.