The most innovative hybrids have incorporated the hip-hop beats with everything from traditional Indian folk music and reggae to Eastern European Jewish klezmer, making it a sound without borders.

These international musicians really pump up the jams.

Now, these global grooves have landed in the U.S.

Here's a musical passport to four of these musicians and their groundbreaking CDs:

PANJABI MC

British-born Rajinder Rai sprinkles in musical curry to spice up the beats of hip-hop. For 10 years, the 28-year-old, who goes by the moniker Panjabi MC, has been making bhangra club hits. The stage name refers to his parents' native Punjab in northern India. The music is a boundary-breaking blend of traditional Indian music contemporized with elements of hip-hop and U.K. dance music.

Panjabi's debut U.S. album, "Beware" ' (now in stores), features this eclectic mix, including a remix of "Beware the Boys" ' ("Mundian To Bach Ke" ') with Jay-Z.

Five years ago, Panjabi recorded the track, featuring a sample from the "Knight Rider" ' TV theme and lyrics in Punjabi, which went to No. 2 in Germany and No. 5 in the United Kingdom. "Beware" ' includes the original version.

Last winter, Jay-Z heard the tune in a Swiss nightclub and had his people contact Panjabi's people.

"Jay saw the reaction it was getting in the clubs and on the radio and with the underground," ' Panjabi says. "He wanted to get involved." '

A short time later, Jay-Z cut his raps; then the Indian musician-deejay remixed it.

In the late spring, the track hit the top 20 on Billboard's Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay Chart and broke the Top 40 on Billboard's Hot 100. It also was the No. 8 selling single in the country.

"The objective has always been to get rap music working with bhangra," ' Panjabi says. "I didn" t see any logical reason why bhangra wouldn't cross over at one point. It mixes the Eastern spiritual side with the power of the bass of the West.''

The rest of Panjabi's disc plays like his greatest hits (going back to 1993, he's released five CDs outside of the U.S.). Other ear-catching blends include "Jind Mahi," ' regarded as bhangra 's national anthem; "Mirza Part 2," ' featuring the genre's first rap interlude by none other than Panjabi himself and "Jogi," ' a European crossover with a cameo by dance-hall star Beenie Man.

Traditional bhangra traces its origins to the farming regions of the Punjab. It developed as dance music performed during the festival of bisakh , celebrating the end of the harvesting season; the music took its name as an extension of the word "bhang," ' or hemp, the region's most commonly harvested crop.

Panjabi hopes his East-meets-West blend will motivate audiophiles to follow his musical roots.

"I think everybody categorizes all (Indian music) into one (category)," ' he says. "Everybody gets to hear a little bit of Bollywood or that mellow Indian music at restaurants. Hopefully, now they will have a little more knowledge about the music they" re hearing and perhaps go buy some and find out where it comes from.''

SOLOMON & SOCALLED

How's this for a musical wedding? The marriage of klezmer to hip-hop.

Solomon & Socalled's new CD, "HipHopKhasene" ' (in stores now), takes listeners through the rites of a traditional Eastern European Jewish wedding -- the ceremony, the ritual, the weeping of the bride and the seven blessings -- coupling it with a hip-hop backbeat.

"The whole concept of the project was to raise a lot of post-modern questions about what is authenticity in music," ' says Sophie Solomon. "To take some of the most authentic klezmer players (names) and mix their performances with hip-hop and re-create the structure of a traditional shtetl Jewish wedding with the beats underneath." '

Let's meet the "bride and groom." '

Solomon, the 25-year-old so-called "bride," ' is one of the leading young klezmer violinists, fusing the traditional ornamentation and phrasing of the fidl technique of Eastern European Jews with a modern sound that incorporates the latest in electronica wizardry.

Playing violin since she was 2 years old and a one-time ragga jungle deejay at European festivals and raves, Solomon had her first sample of the dance music and programmed beats via the techno-trance scene of the early 1990s.

"I was blown away by the organic nature of dance music, especially when it came to dancing in a field at dawn to trance music," ' she says.

Around the same time, a friend of Solomon's was a fan of Klezmatics, a pre-eminent klezmer band. The sounds reminded Solomon of the Yiddish songs her father sang to her, and she jumped headfirst into her musical heritage.

She immersed herself with the music, studying and practicing it authentically and rigorously, and eventually formed her own klezmer band, Oi Va Voi.

"Looking back, there are, for me, clear parallels between the shared communal experience of dancing at a rave and the shared experience of dancing to klezmer music, or perhaps, even more powerful, singing a wordless Hasidic nigun together and reaching a heightened state," ' Solomon says.

In August 2001, Solomon met her future "groom" ' at KlezKanada, a klezmer music camp located in the woods outside Montreal.

Joshua Dolgin, 26, is Montreal-based hip-hop producer Socalled.

At 19, Dolgin started collecting records, sampling and exploring beats.

"I had to make hip-hip, but had to make it real somehow or make it speak from my heart," ' he says. "Even though James Brown or Sly and the Family Stone are instantly funky and great, the Jewish sounds (of Aaron Lebedeff and Moyshe Oysher) had the best breaks I" d found in a long time.''

Now Dolgin's a hardcore klez head.

"I sit here and listen to klezmer day in and day out," ' he says.

He hopes the daring medleys on "HipHopKhasene" ' influence listeners to browse for Jewish music.

"If it could get people to listen to the sources or where I sampled it from, that would be amazing," ' Dolgin says. "People don" t like Jewish music. Even though there's this amazing history, you don't here it on the radio; it's ignored.

"Today it" s kind of ridiculous to listen to it because it's old music,'' Dolgin says. "But people listen to (Duke) Ellington and people still like Beethoven." '

TEGO CALDERON

Nicknamed "el abayarde" ' (fire ant) by his grandmother, Tego Calderon tries to mirror that insect with his biting lyrics that confront racism.

"I want to bother people who accept the status quo, people who fool the public with cute faces," ' says the 31-year-old musician.

The Puerto Rican resident wraps his words in reggaeton, a new musical movement which was born in the late 1990s on his island homeland, that blends hip-hop, rap and reggae. His debut CD, "El Abayarde," ' sold 150,000 copies in Puerto Rico and has caused a firestorm in the U.S.

It sold 70,000 copies as an import on the East Coast, and last month Calderon headlined a sold-out reggaeton concert at Madison Square Garden.

Though he's this genre's leading artistic force, Calderon initially turned a deaf ear to reggaeton.

"When I started doing music, I didn" t like reggaeton that much. It's not that lyrical. The themes are about dancing, having sex, having fun,'' he says. "I like to write music and get my point across. But you can do both things, and that" s what I'm doing.''

A hip-hop and rap fan who was influenced by such in-your-face artists as Rakim, The Notorious B.I.G., Tupac Shakur and Public Enemy, Calderon says many of his lyrical confrontations grew out of the 2 1/2 years he and his family spent in Miami.

At the time, Calderon was 16.

"I" m a black Puerto Rican, and I always knew what I was. But when I got to the States, I felt the rejection from other Puerto Ricans, like I didn't belong,'' he says. "There" s a division between blacks and Hispanics.

"It" s not that in Puerto Rico there's no racism, there is. When I came back to Puerto Rico, I became more aware of what was going on. In the States, it's more in your face. Down here, they try to fake it.''

But Calderon's not going to fake it. He refuses to ignore the racial problems in Puerto Rico, but admits he can't rap hard core all the time.

"It can" t all be about the struggle. Sometimes people want to party and not think about the problems,'' Calderon says. "I do some hard-core and then some reggaeton that people can dance to. I don" t want to push people away. I want to bring them over.''

Phillip Zonkel can be reached at (562) 499-1258 or by e-mail atphillip.zonkel@presstelegram.com