'Who approaches the Buddha?" asks the Buddha. "Who Are You," asks The Who.

Artists ask as well as show us who we are, but several recent releases prove that this question of identity is growing more complicated. Geography is no longer destiny. We are an open question, revised and reshuffled with greater ease and more options.

Look at Texas-raised Mexican-American Michael Ramos. He has played with John Mellencamp, the Rembrandts and the Bo-Deans, but he single-handedly created the "group" Charanga Cakewalk for "Loteria de La Cumbia Lounge" (Triloka), a wonderful electro-hybrid project of cumbia rhythms originally from Colombia.

Then there's Manu Chao, a musical Peter Pan who has lived in several European and South American countries and absorbed their cultures into his internationally popular albums. Now he teams with Mali's Amadou and Mariam, who have earned worldwide goodwill for their sweet and gritty Africanized electric blues, which reflected both Mali and Mississippi.

Matching the couple and Chao on "Dimanche ... Bamako" (Nonesuch) proves to be as inspired as it is unexpected. Chao's effervescent, quirky pop sensibility leavens Amadou and Mariam's rougher sound and lifts it further from its cultural moorings. In fact, it almost seems like producer Chao threatens to overwhelm the hosts of the party: By the fifth track, he's out front, singing lead vocals. Still, the album's mix is synergistic, with the resulting whole greater than its parts.

Chao also contributes a track on "Another World Is Possible" (Uncivilized World), an album that protests corporate globalization with an international lineup of musicians and writers. The album mostly lets artists play in their signature styles, but there are some frisky mutts in the litter. The mighty Asian Dub Foundation brings its South Asian electro-rap agit-prop full circle with a tip of the cap to The Clash by doing "Police on My Back."

The album also includes a 50-page book with essays by noted writers such as the United States' Noam Chomsky, Portugal's José Salamanga and India's Arundhati Roy. The writings flesh out the message of the music, which is that people should join in harmonious diversity, not deadening corporate-mandated uniformity.

The Brazilian force of nature Daniela Mercury, who comes to BAM next Saturday, has released "Carnaval Elêtronico" (BMG), which sounds like remixes of her songs - and at times, she seems to reach abroad and lose sight of her own home shores.

The album is probably thrilling for young club-going Brazilians, who get to hear homegrown house music. For "foreign" Brazilophiles it can be fun, but there is a feeling of saudade, or nostalgia, for her more Brazilian style. After all, giving Brazilian musicians a rhythm machine is akin to giving Mario Batali "E-Z Italian Cooking": He can faithfully render the recipes, but you know that he can do much better.

Either way, Mercury is a firecracker, and it's a good bet that BAM's comfy chairs will just be getting in the way when local Brazilians get into carnaval mode.

Coming to Carnegie Hall next Saturday is the Gangbé Brass Band, which demonstrates that you don't need electricity to modernize traditional music - or to rock out. Listening to the band's "Whendo" (World Village), with its mix of brass, polyrhythmic percussion and call-and-response singing is like listening to the history of the African diaspora all at once. Cuba, New Orleans and West Africa all seem to come together at once, trading joyous riffs and rhythms.

The band's unique sound has roots in the colonial era, when some Africans learned wind instruments while in the French army. It wasn't long before jazz settled in among the traditional music genres of the tiny country's 50 ethnic groups.

All these artists highlight how regional music found common ground in the borderless world marketplace of international popular music. As Brazil's tropicalistas did in the 1960s, these artists are creating a happy mongrel music. Today, that musical miscegenation happens in as many different ways as there are people making it.

Marty Lipp can be reached at martylipp@hotmail.com.