By Susan Kepecs

Who are we, seven years into the 21st century? Is Madison still Dairyland's cultural core, or has our level of sophistication risen with population growth and the crime rate? Ticket sales at the city's two main performing arts venues this year should contain clues to our current identity.

The 88-year-old Wisconsin Union Theater's an art-deco bastion of deep, edgy art. But can the cultural arm of the university, long reliant on institutional support, maintain its intellectual stance in this sound-bite, megacorp era? The Overture Center's fourth season -- "Overture Presents," as distinct from its local resident troupes -- follows the trend set from day one, financing a handful of wilder works with profits from more popular programming. Will this strategy still succeed?

The answers depend on you. Here's my biased assessment of the Overture and Union Theater seasons. Pick your own tickets, and remember what my grandma used to say -- there's no disputing over taste.

Percussion freaks will go for Global Drum Project (Oct. 26, Overture Hall). But the real world-beat feast is at the Wisconsin Union Theater, with its cutting-edge World Music series and the Madison World Music Festival. This year’s World Music whoppers are Senegalese mbalax master Youssou N’Dour (Dec. 6); Hugh Masekela (Jan.31), the high priest of funky post-bop township jive; and Chicana-Mixteca alt/ranchera queen Lila Downs (April 11). Also on tap are two rising stars: Idan Raichel (Nov. 7), with his radically multicultural Israeli band, and Anoushka Shankar (Oct. 5), Ravi’s daughter, hitting her own stride with musicians from her ’05 Rise album.