Reduce the songs on Corey Harris’ new blu.black to their topics and sentiments and it seems almost programmatic in its African-American positivity. The songs celebrate blackness, freedom and empowerment, and they’re against Babylon and colonialism. Even love is high-minded and dignified. Harris’ performances make it all less pro forma than that description sounds, though. He doesn’t sing the songs as spirituals, but he’s soulful in a way that connotes both passion for life and a higher purpose.

It also helps that Harris has developed a distinctive, reggae-based musical voice that draws from the blues and R&B in its urban and urbane incarnations. At times, his lovers rock borders on quiet storm in its satiny lushness, but the grit in his voice grounds “King and Queen.” Periodically, he drops into a solid skank as on the sunny “Run Around Girl” and “Babylon Walls” to show he can, but more often than not, he’s working an appealing, personal, musical hybrid. And though he does a lot with the songs he has, his lyrical vocabulary should be equally idiosyncratic.