The music business is populated by many more people who knock around its fringes than by stars who make a handsome living. On occasion, hustle and hard work push someone with talent from the margin to another plane. Witness Toussaint, the stage name of Paul Barrett, a 30-year-old singer out of Muncie, Ind., who cut his teeth in the choir at the Baptist church where his mother sang and his father preached.

"We were in church eight days a week," he said in a phone interview prior to a show in Arcata, Calif., to celebrate his new album, "Black Gold" (I Grade). Performing gospel music, he toured the Midwest with his siblings beginning at age 3 or 4, he said.

Toussaint's secular career began when he attended Earlham College in Richmond, Ind., fronting a fusion band called Six Dollar Cleveland. "We played funk. We had two horns, keys, guitar, bass. All original stuff. Schools, bars—it gave me my first taste of the process."

In pursuit of a larger music scene, he moved to Boston, where a friend stoked his interest in reggae music. "Burning Spear, Bob Marley—I dug in deep. I became obsessed with it," he said. "At that point, I had been playing with every single band you could think of in Boston—hip-hop, funk, reggae, a Fela Kuti cover band. Word was getting around. I made a lot of noise."

He joined Joint Chiefs, a local reggae group. "My sound started to develop a little more. My performance was getting stronger." He used Toussaint Yeshua and Toussaint Liberator as stage names. In 2006, the jam trio Soulive hired him to sing lead.

"Our first gig was opening for Dave Matthews in front of 25,000 people," he said. He was featured on the band's "No Place Like Soul," its 2007 album that, to the dismay of some Soulive fans, nudged the group toward a sound incorporating pop, reggae and soul. When Soulive decided to return to its jam roots, Toussaint departed, though not before appearing with the band when it opened for the Rolling Stones.

He hooked up for a while with Buru Style, which plays niyabinghi music, the Jamaican genre that spawned dub, reggae, rocksteady and ska, and started his own band, the Trauma Unit. Gigs in the Virgin Islands brought him together with producer Laurent Alfred, who founded I Grade Records. Mr. Alfred, known as Tippy, had recorded tracks that required a singer. Toussaint pounced.

"When I met up with him, he had some rhythms that were pretty much complete. In four days' time, I recorded over 11 of those tracks." Toussaint's bandmates added guitar, keyboard and drum parts. The result is "Black Gold," an album of smooth, romantic reggae known as lovers' rock.

"Black Gold," Toussaint said, is differentiated by the touch of American soul music he brings. "Hello My Beautiful" is a gorgeous ballad with a stirring chorus and "Unforgettable" features acoustic guitars under and around Toussaint's powerful and reedy voice.

"That soul sound," he said, "you know, I just long for the days of soul singers who come with thoughts to share in an unabashed expression of culture. We shouldn't have to hold back who we are."

Toussaint calls his hybrid "soul roots," and the blend is evident on the title track with its reggae horns, soul sing-along melody and strings recorded at Daptone Studios in Brooklyn, N.Y. Reggae rhythms carry "Roots in a Modern Time," "This Song" and "Be You," and he raps with pep on "Conquering Cocaine." "Soulive was definitely mortified by my rapping," he said with a laugh.

A cynic would say Toussaint's commitment to reggae and its culture is a professional ploy, citing how he speaks without the Caribbean accent he uses when he sings. But reggae hasn't held great purchase with consumers since its heyday in the '70s and '80s, and he has the vocal chops to pursue other avenues to commercial success. Besides, in the broader rock world, John Fogerty, who sings with a Southern twang, was raised in Berkeley, Calif., and Gillian Welch, who can evoke life in rural settings, grew up in Los Angeles. Yet no one questions their commitment to their music. "Black Gold" works as a cross-cultural exercise and can be seen as an acknowledgment of the roots of reggae in American R&B and sinewy postbop jazz.

Toussaint just completed his West Coast shows promoting "Black Gold." A national tour is under consideration. "We're going to try to swing it again before the end of the year," he said. Given the drive he's shown to get where he is today, it's a sure bet he will get all he can out of his fine new album.