NEW YORK — Grammy-nominated saxophonist Godwin Louis explores the universality and joy of sacred music in his sophomore release, Psalms and Proverbs. The album is being released internationally by Blue Room Music on August 23.
Louis draws on religious musical traditions around the world, including his Haitian roots, Haiti being where European, African and Native traditions converged to create the roots of jazz. The disc includes gospel and liturgical music from West African Ewe and Beninois sources as well as 16th-century French composer Claude Goudimel (for a beautiful sax-trumpet duet), the Scottish-Anglican hymn “Abide with Me,” and compositions he wrote in collaboration with several ministers, including his late father, the Rev. Marcel Louis — Psalms 23 Part II (I Shall Fear No Evil)” and “Psalms 23 Part III (Surely Goodness and Mercy)”.
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Born into a musical family in Harlem of Haitian heritage, Louis was raised in Bridgeport, Connecticut, and Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Maturing on the scene in New Orleans, Boston, New York and beyond, Louis is a composer-arranger-virtuoso soloist who got his start on saxophone at age nine. A Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz Saxophone competition finalist, a 2024 Grammy nominee (for arrangements on singer Cécile McLorin Salvant’s Meìlusine), and a Berklee College of Music woodwinds professor, he is a man of devoutly lyrical imagination, as richly demonstrated in Psalms and Proverbs.
With a sax sound as robust, focused and fluid as the finest of his reeds (think Cannonball Adderley, Paquito D’Rivera and Donald Harrison), Louis leads an extraordinary ensemble through a program varied by its themes and formats, including spoken word, chants and choral passages; deft instrumental interplay and stirring African American and Afro-Caribbean rhythms. He takes full advantage of post-bop jazz freedoms, also embracing gospel music tropes, son montuno style, bolero and calypso flourishes (for instance on the track “Collective Bovarysm”).
As he proved in 2019 with his audacious two-CD debut album Global, Louis has a humanist and internationalist perspective, informed by the African diaspora and expressed in his embrace of jazz in its totality — broadly defined — and his service to it as an international ambassador. He’s toured Africa (and is the namesake of a rooftop jazz club in Togo), Europe and China, and also returned to nourish his roots in his Caribbean homeland as founder of the Experience Ayiti, a nonprofit multidisciplinary arts organization offering musical education to and developing leadership skills among Haitian youth.
Core members of Louis’s Global band return for Psalms and Proverbs, including brassman Billy Buss, pianist Axel Tosca, organist Johnny Mercier, drummer Obed Calvaire, percussionist Markus Schwartz, bassist Hogyu Hwang and vocalist Melissa Stylianou. Trinidad-born trumpet star Etienne Charles partners with Louis in the frontline on the opening “Showers of Blessings/Kplolanyuiade” and “Pelo Malo.”
Psalms and Proverbs is also a showcase for vocal-focused tracks featuring the talents of acclaimed world stars. Louis has enlisted both Xiomara Laugart, known as the “Voice of Cuba,” and two-time Grammy Award-nominated artist Lea Lórien. Both appear on “Pelo Malo (Bad Hair),” an uncompromising, at first troubled but ultimately affirming resolution of the complex conversation about hair texture that has plagued generations of Afro-Latino and other Black communities. Louis introduces Lècokpon, a bright Benin artist, and on several tracks Stylianou, a singer-songwriter with five albums as a leader and member of the vocal trio Duchess, harmonizes with Haitian American songstress Pauline Jean (who steps out dramatically on “Psalms 6”).
“Whether in Africa or the Americas, the hymn and the playing of music are central to worship and praise in any number of religious traditions,” said Louis. “This album explores that nexus and carries on the tradition of sacred music and its influence on jazz — the music steeped in the sounds of West Africa, the Caribbean, the United States and Europe — in what I hope are new and exciting ways for audiences.”
Psalms and Proverbs is produced by Louis, Calvaire and Chan Jung.
Psalms and Proverbs can be preordered now at https://orcd.co/godwinlouis or on August 23 at Spotify, iTunes, Tidal, Deezer, Amazon and more. For more information on Louis, visit https://www.godwinlouis.com.
