Bangers Without Borders on Red Baraat’s Latest

In early 2017, I interviewed Pakistani author Mohsin Hamid about his book Exit West. It’s an incredible story, and it was one of the top books of 2017 for me (as well as for Barack Obama!). When we spoke, though, I wondered aloud if there was something I, an American of European descent, was missing that would stand out to a Southeast Asian reader. Hamid, a world citizen if ever there was one, calmly assured me that I was thinking in terms of borders. Art and literature speak to the spirit regardless of which side of these arbitrary lines on a map one is from.

“One thing that I have learned traveling all over the world with my book is that there’s kind of no such thing. There’s no such thing as the American reader, and there’s no such thing as the Pakistani reader,” Hamid said.

Brooklyn’s Red Baraat evidently holds the same attitude, but toward music. Though its foundation is in Southeast Asian folk music, this horn-heavy act draws from all over the globe in creating its sound. Red Baraat’s new Sound the People is a bold record, both in its infectious and celebratory Punjabi-Caribbean-jazz-psychedelia-etc. party melodies and in its forthright expressions of immigrant and non-white rights in the Trump era. It’s the sound of a wicked, sweaty, nonstop multicultural block party that a MAGA hat would get you kicked out of in a heartbeat. If you think in terms of borders, you’re going to miss a memorable throwdown.

This is an instrument-driven record delivered by phenomenal players: soprano saxophonist Jonathon Haffner cuts through the mix, while the percussion team of Red Baraat founder Sunny Jain, producer Little Shalimar (whose work is also heard on all three Run the Jewels LPs), and drummer Chris Eddleton lays an insistent, consistent foundation for the whole record.

Where there are guest vocals, they are well chosen. On the title track, for instance, rapper Heems (formerly of Das Racist) delivers a fiery sermon against the current president and the historical treatment of immigrants. The tune opens with a flourish of horns before leading into a mid-tempo bruiser, Red Baraat’s horns, overdriven guitar, and layered percussion creating the sound of a rapper backed by a street band at the top of its game. Heems sports an impressive flow, too, hardly even pausing his masterful and rage-filled diatribe to take a breath. “In the West Indies speaking Hindi at the shore,” he rhymes before delivering what may be the album’s most memorable line: “I pray to god in English, he don’t hear me no more.”

While Sound the People is a fusion record, its swirling, visceral dance cuts have Punjabi folk music at their core. Yet this is living, breathing folk music that responds to the world around it. The lyrics in the patient “Ghadar Machao” tell the story of a recently landed Punjabi immigrant, but switch from Punjabi in one line to English in the next and then into Spanish. In a just world, it wouldn’t be a political act to shift fluidly from language to language, but this album is being released in 2018, the era of ICE raids and of being asked what your citizenship status is simply because you have brown skin or were overheard speaking a language other than English. In that environment, “Ghadar Machao” is a statement of immigrant unity. It’s simultaneously bittersweet and empowering.

And then there’s “Kala Mukhra,” which features Pakistani Punjabi vocalist and writer Ali Sethi. This cut starts with a dizzying, horn-driven overture before u-turning into a polyrhythmic jazz fusion groove, almost like a hand percussion and horn-driven Return to Forever. As the song ends, it dissolves into Afro-Caribbean psychedelia, communicating the proud, bold, and indestructible diversity that makes Sound the People an essential addition to the resistance playlist.