Dhafer Youssef

Presented by World Music/CRASHarts. At Berklee Performance Center, Friday. Tickets $28-$42, 617-876-4275, www.worldmusic.org

Dhafer Youssef, the Tunisian singer, oud player, and maker of stirring, hard-to-place projects that erase the frontiers of jazz and the Arabic tradition, tells the story of al-Akhtal, a Syrian poet of the seventh century who, like him, had little use for category.

A Christian and hedonist, Akhtal was called to the court of the Caliph, who in those early days of Islam had founded the Umayyad Dynasty. The Caliph admired the poet’s work, and asked him to convert to Islam.

“Akhtal said, ‘I will drink until the early hours of the morning’ — meaning that I don’t need you, I’m happy how I am,’’ Youssef says. Appreciating this answer, the ruler relented, and showered the poet with riches. “I like that,’’ Youssef says. “If you want something from somebody, don’t push them. People are not so tolerant now.’’

Texts by Akhtal and another poet from Damascus, the 17th-century scholar and Sufi mystic Nabulsi, are the lyrical core of Youssef’s new album, “Diwan of Beauty and Odd.’’ Recorded in New York City, it presents as a jazz quintet, featuring a state-of-the-art group with pianist Aaron Parks, bassist Ben Williams, drummer Mark Guiliana, and trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire. But the band’s interplay with Youssef’s oud (the fretless Arabic lute), the intricate odd-meter grooves, the poetry sung in Arabic, and most of all Youssef’s voice — a yearning, skyward thing that ladders up to the highest pitches with great emotion and technical control — give the work a unique and memorable identity.

Listeners in Europe, where Youssef has made the bulk of his career, recording eight albums as a leader since the mid-’90s and collaborating on others with artists from India’s Zakir Hussain to Mali’s Ballaké Sissoko, may recognize his signature. He has honed a contemplative yet groove-oriented approach on projects with electronic textures and effects, like “Digital Prophecy’’ (2003) and “Divine Shadows’’ (2005), made with members of the Norwegian “nu-jazz’’ scene, and on more acoustic recent ventures.

But this soulful, idiosyncratic artist is far less known in the United States. He makes his Boston debut on Friday at the Berklee Performance Center, performing music from the new album with a modified but equally high-octane band that includes Parks, Matt Brewer on bass, and Marcus Gilmore on drums.

“My idea of music is that it doesn’t have any color, passport, or barrier,’’ Youssef says on the phone from Los Angeles, where the pianist Herbie Hancock — “a prophet,’’ Youssef calls him — has invited him to record on a new project. “It’s not about making something traditional, or jazz, or crossover. I don’t see myself as a musician anymore, but a universal messenger. Creativity is the most important thing.’’

Though open-minded, Youssef’s approach is rigorous. “The music can be challenging,’’ says Guiliana, who first played with Youssef on the 2010 album “Abu Nawas Rhapsody’’ and has toured with him extensively. “There’s lots of rhythmic detail and compositional complexity. That said, it’s incredibly organic. I don’t think the emphasis is on those complicated elements in its delivery.’’

On “Diwan of Beauty and Odd,’’ about half the tracks are instrumental while the balance feature Youssef’s singing. Some of the richest passages foreground vocals and piano. “Aaron [Parks] did an incredible job of connecting intuitively into Dhafer’s language,’’ says Guiliana. Meanwhile, the oud adds both texture and melodic detail. “Because it’s not a fretted instrument, he’s accessing certain pitches that Aaron can’t find.’’

Youssef began, in fact, as a singer. He grew up in a small town in Tunisia with muezzins — who sing the call to prayer — in his family, and like many children he learned to recite the Koran in a musical way. Though he chose a secular life, learning the oud and briefly attending conservatory in Tunisia before leaving to find his way in the Vienna and Paris jazz scenes, he never lost touch of the emotion that inhabits the prayer call.

“The mystical path in music is very important to me,’’ he says.

His voice, with its remarkable range, is a powerful vehicle for these feelings. “I was born with it,’’ he says. “And I’m like a sponge, I’m always absorbing, whether it’s opera, classical, Persian, or Indian singing. There’s no barrier for me between the traditional and the contemporary. I’ll take a piano chord and make it an opening to tell a story.’’

On “Diwan of Beauty and Odd,’’ the stories reside, in part, in the poems of al-Akhtar and Nabulsi; a diwan is an Arabic term for a collection of poetry. Through them, Youssef also pays homage to Damascus, a city that he has visited and loved. “It was for me like a paradise,’’ he says. Implicit, of course, is a sadness about the civil war that has torn Syria apart for the last six years.

But there is a more universal message, too. “Beauty and Odd’’ refers partly to the unusual time signatures in Youssef’s compositions, but also to people and values that are at odds with social or aesthetic norms, or with the political majority.

“Everything in life comes from its opposite,’’ Youssef says. “Beauty needs weird-looking stuff. Happiness needs sadness. We need each other to create. For me, the odd is difference in life. We are here and we do good in life because of difference.’’

Dhafer Youssef

Presented by World Music/CRASHarts. At Berklee Performance Center, Friday. Tickets $28-$42, 617-876-4275, www.worldmusic.org

Siddhartha Mitter can be reached at siddharthamitter@gmail.com.