Benjamin Boone: Dream Walking

Integrating different cultural entities in music is always a difficult proposition; getting the right mix and balance so that one culture does not usurp others to make a new artistic product requires great skill and tact. The New Global Ensemble, made up of musicians from the U.S., Germany, Ghana, Mexico, and Ireland, pull from their respective music traditions for a creative fusion on their album Dream Walking.

U.S. saxophonist Benjamin Boone got together with German violinist Stefan Poetzsch to create the New Global Ensemble to perform the music that Boone conceived of during his Fulbright fellowships in Ghana and Ireland. The ensemble is really two different bands with Boone and Poetzsch as the constant in both. The Ghana band, recorded in 2018, includes Aaron Bebe Sukura on gyil (a type of marimba) and mbira (a thumb piano) and Baffour Awuah Kyeremateng on vocals, asalato (a percussive instrument of two shakers connected by a string) and prempensua (a box-like instrument with large wooden tines). The Ireland band, recorded in 2023, consists of Mexican-born Óscar Mascareñas on vocals and Anthony Monahan on guitar and electronics.

The album works best as a whole, listening to the songs in order, as the sequencing contrasts and complements the different bands' sounds in what Poetzsch refers to as a "musical journey." Mascareñas' wordless vocalizing open and close the album (as well as appearing on two other songs). The effect of the vocals is haunting and exhilarating, with an emotional resonance similar to the great Pakistani singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. As the vocals, sounding almost ancient, layer across electronic drones and the sorrowful bowing of Poetzsch, they contribute to the dreamlike feel of the album.

The Ghana sessions also incorporate the ancient and modern integration of sound. "Variations on a Ghanian Theme," for example, opens with Kyeremateng's joyful singing (the only song with actual lyrics on the album, in the West African language of Twi). The vocals are intertwined with Boone's jazz saxophone musings and Poetzsch's electronically-processed violin. Altogether, it sets out what it aims to do: create a new art work from the arts of various cultures.

The whole album builds to a climax with "Friday Afternoon in Accra," where the melody is laid out on the gyil and then joined by the violin and saxophone. Halfway through, the gyil stops, then changes rhythm to something more abstract and the violin and saxophone follow suit. It. is that sort of symbiosis that make for some powerful moments and what makes collaborations such as this an effective expression of music's various intersections.