July 14, 2025 – Hoke's Jukebox

I’ll make it easier: What band can steamroll international borders to induce unanimous dancing anywhere?

Fine: I’ll pin it down further:

Who can inspire Sikhs in turbans, Muslim girls in hijabs, friends I know to be Rastafarian, Jewish or agnostic – in short, as Boz Scaggs sang: “Every Kinda people” – to all dance to “Hava Nagilah” together?

Just one band I know of: Red Baraat from everywhere via Brooklyn; a perfect choice to delight “every kinda people” in the 35th Music Haven season-opening show Sunday in Schenectady’s Central Park – ten years to the night after they debuted here on the same stage.

Red Baraat – From left, Jonathan Goldberger, guitar; Sonny Singh, trumpet; Varun Das (obscured), drums; Sunny Jain, bandleader and dhol; John Altieri, Sousaphone; Jasim Perales, trombone; Alison Shearer, soprano saxophone

All that brass – three pounds for a trumpet, five for a trombone, 30 to 35 for a Sousaphone and just over two for a soprano saxophone – looked great; all shone brightly but the somewhat oxidized Sousaphone. Way more important: the exuberant, globe-spinning sounds they made, along with a drumset, electric guitar and dhol, a two-headed drum that founder-leader Sunny Jain wore horizontally across his torso and hit from both ends with different-shaped sticks, making different sounds.

The whole thing was different.

Alison Shearer

When Alison Shearer lit up a soprano sax solo, she conjured Sidney Bechet leading a Mardi Gras parade in Istanbul. She aimed another solo at the hijab-wearing girls bopping down front, all smiles, exchanging finger-heart hand-signs. A Sousaphone player marching in uniformed formation at a football game seems ordinary enough, but the extraordinary John Altieri ran around the stage, fast, but not missing a note. Guitarist Jonathan Goldberger could hold his own in a Delta blues dive; and fit hand-in-glove, harmonizing with Shearer, Jasim Perales’s trombone or Sonny Singh’s trumpet. Drummer Varun Das somehow managed to put beats under every note up front, where Jain rapped a bit and Singh sang some.

When Sing took the mic to proclaim, “I landed here from Punjab,” he underlined how this stuff could only happen here, by coming to us from other places.

Jain introduced their opener “Horizon” as Punjabi soul, and somehow the roof stayed put over the stage as beats and riffs erupted underneath and everybody got up and moved. The energy intensified in “Chaal, Baby.” A few songs later, Jain hosted a dance contest, inviting up three contestants he’d spotted in the audience. Others surged onstage to participate, one or two at a time as the seething band blasted big funk behind them.

Sunny Jain

Impeccable musical carpentry built big structures from short riffs, like soul bands. Solos, especially by saxophonist Shearer and guitarist Goldberger, flew the coop for distant planets. When everybody surged together in Sun Ra-style anarchic jazz, they slow-cooked like vindaloo or spiced WAY hot, a busy clatter of audio curry. Songs had form, force or subtlety, at any tempo.

Sunny Jain, left, and John Altieri

While Sousaphonist Altieri’s hyper-active bass lines mostly ran hot, he laid a menacing slow drone under a later tune. As things revved staccato, Jain called for and got what he wanted, folks to stand, chant, hands way up. Periodically he called out “Schenec-“ and the crowd yelled back “TADY!” through laughs.

Jonathan Goldberger

Jasim Perales

Varun Das

The dance energy slowed a bit in the middle as things turned briefly more intellectual and some fans sat; but they built big again for an encore-earning fun finish.

Opener Quadrature exploded from the same Brooklyn ethno-sonic stewpot as Red Baraat. Their name suggests a math problem or medical condition, but they entertained with zippy music and arch humor. They anchored one foot in south Asia as the other danced the hokey pokey around the rest of the globe; thrilling playing and fun shtick.

Neel Murgai

Introducing the cosmic fusion “Black Hole Blues,” sitarist Neel Murgai asked, “Any astrophysicists in the house?” In Schenectady, of course there were some; but even non-Ph.Ds could follow his explanation of how music stretches and compresses time. They managed that easily in a romp with 70s fusion force, recalling John McLaughlin’s similarly cross-cultural Shakti, but with no guitar in sight. Like a bluesman pumping the crowd, Murgai asked, “Can I play my sitar?” Yes.

Indofunk Satish

While a morning raga-based jam followed traditional alap-and-tal structure, at times they sounded like (60s British blues-rock giants) Cream, a caffeinated Ravi Shankar sitting in. Indofunk Satish mutated his slide-and-valve trumpet sound with effects pedals while bassist Damon Banks and drummer Tripp Dudley somehow made the bristling rhythmic bustle of complex time tunes in seven or 13 feel fine fun.