Dhol-and-brass band Red Baraat mixes India vibes with party music

When Sunny Jain was 5 years old, he traveled to India from his home in Rochester, N.Y., for his uncle's wedding.

"It was the first time I saw an Indian brass band," says the leader of the boisterous dhol-and-brass octet Red Baraat. The band, which has just released its third studio album, Gaadi of Truth, will play Saturday night at the Ardmore Music Hall.

"I remember taking a nap and waking up and I came outside and the baraat" - the groom's wedding procession - "had already started," says Jain, speaking from his home in Brooklyn. "I was like, 'What the hell is going on?' There were all these people, and everyone was dancing and having an amazing time. And then the dhol players showed up and started banging away. And I was just mesmerized."

Decades passed. Jain established himself as a modern jazz drummer schooled on Elvin Jones and Philly Joe Jones. And after another trip to India, Jain came back to the United States with a dhol of his own.

He "quickly fell in love," he says, with the double-headed drum featured in Punjabi bhangra music. Being free to move around with the instrument slung over a shoulder, rather than sitting trapped behind a drum kit, was "liberating."

"And the sound of the drum - it's hanging against your gut, and you're playing this instrument that's really loud - it's meant for the outdoors and spring harvest. The music is resonating throughout your insides. It unlocked a whole different person in me."

Anyone who has seen Red Baraat perform knows that the group - which has altered its touring lineup to include its first nonhorn or percussion member in guitarist Jonathan Goldberger - is an inimitable high-energy party band, mixing Indian classical and Bollywood film-score sounds with funk, hip-hop, and New Orleans brass band sass.

On Gaadi of Truth, however, Jain pushes further to have his band's music embody the pluralistic principles of the Jainism faith the Rutgers University grad grew up with in upstate New York.

"It's somewhat reductive when we are called a party band," he says. "We always throw down and have fun. But what's important is that sense of pluralism that's my vision and outlook on life. Gaadi means car in Hindi, so the album title is about the car of truth, or journey of truth. And it's not absolute truth, but relative truth we have to awaken ourselves to that's embodied with the pluralism of the band.

"Those ideas are very much in the makeup of the songs," Jain goes on. "This album is about an expansion of sound, of sonic territory. We don't want to just be a Brooklyn bhangra dhol-and-brass band, but just a band that lets the sound travel where it may. To just be a band that can play any kind of music."