he use of horizontal played-with-a-slide steel guitars in black Pentecostal churches, a practice dating back the 1930s, handily illustrates the complex, mutt-like nature of American musical cultures. Hawaiians had pioneered the technique of pressing a steel bar into the strings of horizontal (Portuguese) guitars with the left hand, sliding from note to note in a voice-like way, while fingerpicking with the right hand. Hawaiians passed the knowledge to some early so-called "sacred steel" players. After Nashville adopted pedal steel guitar in the 1950s -- on which a player could retune strings on the fly, using foot pedals and kneepads -- some sacred players adopted that more complicated instrument (while others stayed with fixed-tuning lap steels).

Sacred steel also cross-pollinates with other African American slide traditions, stemming from the one-string diddly-bow: a length of wire stretched between woodblocks that might be nailed to the side of a house, and played with a sliding bottle. That starter instrument was a way station for blues guitarists "fretting" with a bottleneck or metal slide slipped over a southpaw finger.

The sacred steel tradition got more exposure in the new century thanks to crossover jammer Robert Randolph. Players who came up in his wake include DaShawn Hickman of Mt. Airy, North Carolina’s Allen Boys, an electric band mixing the sacred and secular. With the 37-minute seven-tune Drums, Roots & Steel, Hickman furthers all that cross-culturalism by deploying a pair of Afro-Latin percussionists in place of drum set. Their congas, bongos, blocks, shakers, tambourine and ringing metal make gospel music’s old-world roots explicit.

Credit for that percussion section goes to album producer Charlie Hunter, whose prominent billing on the sleeve is more about that groovemeister’s endorsement than his profile within. Hunter plays electric bass guitar on all but one track, mostly taking a low-key role, though he will facilitate the bump in the beat. Many churches discourage boogieing down in the pews, but in the House of God sect that gave rise to sacred steel, such exertions signal ecstatic praise, not demonic influence. The bumpingest number leads off, a syncopated lope on Dixielanders’ fave “When the Saints Go Marching In.”

Hickman plays a 12-string pedal steel, and such instruments (with their narrow-interval tunings) were designed to facilitate lush, multi-string chord voicings. But Hickman, like other sacred-steelists, is a linear, voice-oriented player: he’s more about melody than background harmony, though he’ll riff in the pauses, and punctuate with grunting chords here and there, emulating amens from the flock, or pianist Horace Silver’s terse jazz comping. Hickman the melodist likes a thick, slightly distorted sound, which, combined with his slide vibrato, mimics rough Pentecostal voices. Sensitive to true and finely shaded pitch, he makes you hear the writhing life in his little fluctuations. (Messing with a decaying note: it’s what guitarists do.) Late in that opening “Saints,” steel with wah-wah pedal testifies over stop-time rhythm, echoing the fancy ornaments one might hear when a choir’s solo singer takes flight. There’s more sanctified aerobatics on the equally evergreen “Just a Closer Walk with Thee,” where Hickman also feathers a few Hawaiian and Nashville chords, and the percussionists set up a quasi-Cuban montuno for him to ride over: more spice in the mix.

Wendy Hickman sings three numbers with friendly gusto. “Shout” is pure gospel joy over a barely modified blues progression; on “Morning Train” she’s answered by wah-wah’d steam-whistle effects -- Hickman at his raunchiest/shoutiest. “Don’t Let the Devil Ride” is really two versions back to back: a slow one where the leader sings a chorus with some of those curlicues he voices on guitar elsewhere, before Wendy takes over on a slightly faster more rhythmically active take with some slinky slide chording. Pedal steel’s upward spirals gets most quietly passionate on a bare-bones, slow-drag, trio “Precious Lord.” Here alas the dual percussionists lay back more than they fill in the open texture, impassive enough to recall a 1970s ethnic-restaurant-band drum machine. Whereas on “Wade in the Water,” they’re right in the pocket.