It was hot! It was the summer of 2018 in the city of Accra, about 400 miles north of the equator, and Benjamin Boone and the Ghana Jazz Collective had gathered in the UVSL recording studio — a white concrete building down one of the many dirt side roads. Even with the high-tech equipment, to get clean recordings, the studio had to turn off the air conditioning during recording sessions.

The heat and humidity was unbearable. Between sessions, the musicians resorted to laying on the cool concrete floor and continuously hydrating.

"I thought I was going to pass out during the recording sessions," Boone recalled. "I was thinking, 'when I get back to the United States, I can re-record this.' So it doesn’t matter if my part is good or not. I’m just going to play with wild abandon and get through it, knowing I can overdub this."

Out of this misery came "Joy." Origin Records released Benjamin Boone’s latest studio album in March 2020 featuring the Ghana Jazz Collective — a group of Ghanaian musicians he met during his time as a U.S. Fulbright Scholar at the University of Ghana. "Joy" is available on Amazon, iTunes, Google Play Music, Spotify, and all music platforms and stores. The recording was made possible in part by the Dean’s Council Annual Fund.

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