By Jon Garelick

In Godwin Louis’s music, prayer seems best expressed in dance.

Godwin Louis, Psalms and Proverbs (Blue Room Music)

Sacred music doesn’t have to be solemn. Though Godwin Louis’s sophomore effort as a leader announces itself as a jazz musician’s exploration of various sacred music traditions, listeners will immediately be struck by the music’s exuberant busyness — swirling percussive cross-rhythms, layered melodies, contrapuntal solo voices. In Louis’s music, prayer seems best expressed in dance.

Boston audiences will remember Louis as one of a number of brilliant alto saxophonists with the Either/Orchestra (Oscar Noriega, Miguel Zenón, Jaleel Shaw, Jeremy Udden, et al.). He’s since gone on to become a Thelonious Monk competition finalist as well as grabbing estimable sideman gigs and other accolades, including a Grammy for his work on Cécile McLorin Salvant’s Mélusine. He’s also now an assistant professor at Berklee.

Psalms and Proverbs follows Louis’s Global (2019). That debut was epic: a double disc of 17 tracks over nearly an hour and a half. The new disc is comparatively modest: 12 tracks in 48 minutes. The new album is also more thematically focused, an attempt to bridge all manner of sacred music hymn traditions from Europe and Africa to the Americas. As that implies, the music’s breadth is still global.

You could say the Harlem-born Louis uses his Haitian heritage as a key to the broader African diaspora. Among the handful of originals are Louis arrangements drawing from Haitian and West African traditional hymns along with Afro-Cuban and other influences, and he’s joined here by a diverse mix of collaborators: Trinidadian trumpeter Etienne Charles and singers Lècôkpon (Benin), Xiomara Laugart (the Cuban expat star), and Pauline Jean (Haiti). Add to them Louis’s core group from Global: trumpeter Billy Buss, pianist Axel Tosca, organist Johnny Mercier, drummer Obed Calvaire, percussionist Markus Schwartz, bassist Hogyu Hwang, and singer Melissa Stylianou (of the vocal group Duchess).

Saxophonist and composer Godwin Louis. Photo: Jonathan Russell

From the first track, “Showers of Blessings/Kplolanyuiade,” as pianist Tosca lays down a four-beat ostinato, soon joined by percussion, bass, and answering phrases from the horns, the album grabs you with its rhythmic verve. Godwin enters on alto, laying a busy line on top of the groove, but then Charles comes through with a gently arcing melody — a hymn tune. It’s a template Louis follows throughout the album: listen through those popping syncopations and you’ll often hear the hymns that serve as melodic foundation.

There’s a lot going on here. In “Vini Non,” a churchy organ introduces a stately hymn tune picked up by the horns, soon backgrounded by fast-paced percussion that makes way for a double-time alto and a bustling piano solo from Tosca. But the hymn melody is never far behind.

Elsewhere, there are more straightforward genre forays, but with idiosyncratic turns. “Kpikpa Han” is a traditional Beninois praise song, replete with vocal chants and handclaps but with a jazzy alto obbligato on top. “Pwoblèm Yo” is an easy-paced Cuban son montuno arrangement of a piece by the Haitian gospel group Le Souffle Divin. And “Pelo Malo” (“Bad Hair”) takes off from a hymn tune sung by Laugart into celebratory salsa, with dueling trumpets by Charles and Buss, juxtaposing sacred and secular concerns.

There are other surprises: a beautiful duet between Louis and Charles on 16^th-century French composer Claude Goudimel’s “Psaumes 121/Proverbs 3”; Louis’s “Psalm 6,” with a ferociously adamant recitation by Jean and Louis on soprano; and the mini-concerto Louis original “Collective Bovarysm,” whose Afro-Latin groove and catchy tune could make it a radio hit if not for the dreamy passages of rubato improv.

Prayers and Proverbs could probably be performed as a suite, given its thematic unity, musical variations, and astute sequencing. The final “Now and Forever” is an appropriate coda, encompassing hymn-like vocals, a son montuno vamp, a high-velocity Louis solo, and a kind of passacaglia for a drum rave-up before a fade-out on a last breathy alto trill — a final sigh of elation and faith.

Jon Garelick can be reached at garelickjon@gmail.com.