Women break musical divide

As Nick Hornby demonstrated in "High Fidelity," categorizing music is a heartfelt preserve of the male. On the other hand, several young women from around the world are quietly breaching the borders between musical cultures.

These women are the musical manifestation of a shrinking world, where children have dual allegiance to the old world of their families and the new world in which they live. Susheela Raman was born in London to Tamil parents, then raised in Australia. She heard the Carnatic classical music of southern India growing up, but discovered funk and rock as a teen. After moving back to London, she and collaborator Sam Mills created a sound that drew on Indian and Western influences.

With her third album, "Music for Crocodiles" (Real World), Raman goes both more East and West, singing more in English, but also playing with Indian musicians for the first time.  Raman's sultry, deep voice lingers like smoke around these moody, darkly lit tunes. While not melancholy, the album has a late-night feel, sometimes a bit funky. In her own subtle but surprising way, Raman creates a hybrid that gracefully leaps and straddles musical worlds.

Similarly, the music of Souad Massi of Algeria lives in several places atonce. Massi found herself a pariah as the front woman of a metal band in Algeria. While her music was not overtly political, her forthrightness was seen as inappropriate for a young woman and she encountered more and more hostility. A trip to Paris led her to immigrate there, where she was exposed to a world of different sounds.

The title of her third album, "Mesk Elil" (Wrasse), means "honeysuckle," the scent of which evokes nostalgia for Massi. In the title cut, she sings, "I miss the streets of my childhood known by heart/ And I even miss those people who hurt me." Although much of the album is tinged with sadness, Massi also shows she can have some fun on several tunes.

The Middle Eastern influence appears in varying degrees throughout "Mesk Elil," though she stretches to record sub-Saharan African music as well as an electronic remix to close the album.  Singing in Arabic is not going to land her on the American pop charts, but Massi is a highly likable singer-songwriter who is turning Algeria's loss into the world's gain. Senegal's Julia Sarr arrived on U.S. shores in a big way last year, debuting at Carnegie Hall as part of Youssou N'Dour's series there. Though Sarr has been a backup singer for African artists, her debut is without precedent. She collaborated with French flamenco guitarist Patrice Larose to create "Set Luna" (Sunnyside), which drew equally from their respective cultures, ultimately meeting in a newly discovered middle ground.