Roots music is on the rise. From Jamaican ska to Louisiana zydeco, and from New York klezmer to Balkan jazz, producers are betting that music buyers are ready to expand their listening palette.

Squeezed by a tough economy and MP3 technology, the recording industry is being pushed to diversify, says Dmitri Vietz of the Bloomington, Ind.-based media company Rock Paper Scissors.

"Much of the change is happening beneath the radar, but the distinction between world music and pop music is quietly breaking down,” he said.

Popular music has long borrowed from sources abroad. Nearly 50 years ago, the harmonies of Zulu vocal music stirred banjoist Pete Seeger and his folk group The Weavers to record "Wimoweh," better known as "The Lion Sleeps Tonight." South African composer Solomon Linda wrote the song.

Zulu song was revisited 30 years later when Paul Simon recorded his Grammy Award-winning album "Graceland" with Ladysmith Black Mambazo.

Other pop icons have explored non-Western music. Peter Gabriel's organization WOMAD (World of Music, Arts and Dance) has presented non-Western artists for more than 20 years. Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart has released 29-world music CDs on the Rykodisc label. His own disk, "Planet Drum," earned a Grammy in 1991.

Latin music has long been represented with salsa icons like vocalist Celia Cruz and percussionist Tito Puente. Jennifer Lopez and Ricky Martin head the current wave.

Perhaps the most remarkable album in this collection, and a must for reggae fans searching for that genre's origin, is "From Paris With Love" (World Village 468017) recorded by the Skatalites, the founding fathers of the modern Jamaican sound.

Formed as a studio band in 1964, the Skatalites created the heavy backbeat grooves that would power Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, and, for a time in the late 1980s, make reggae the world's most ubiquitous pop music. Five of the band's founding members are still in the group; drummer Lloyd Knibb and bassist Lloyd Brevett have played together nearly six decades.

Their sound couldn't get any tighter. Supremely confident, the Skatalites recorded this disc the old-fashioned way, without overdubs and in a single sitting. The blend is party-band rough. Turn up the volume and it sounds like the band has set up in your living room.

Equally muscular, but more contemporary, is Everybody's Dancin'  (Times Square 9034), a bilingual Creole zydeco disc from Geno Delafose and his band, French Rockin' Boogie. A second-generation Louisiana-based accordionist, Geno cut his musical teeth playing in his father's celebrated band, the Eunice Playboys.

But while Geno began with his father's sound, he has seasoned it with more African sinew and Cajun heat. The result is let-the-good-times-roll tough. Even the waltzes seem to sweat.

Out of New York City's East Village comes a different kind of heat. There, the Klezmatics have just released their fourth CD, "The Possessed Jews with Horns are Back: The Klezmatics Rise Up!" (Rounder Records 11661-3197-2). Sung in Yiddish and English, the disc is a curious mix of melodies ancient and modern, sacred and secular.

The focus is on politics and identity, on celebrating Jewish ethnicity while moving outside its circle, on rediscovery and centering in the aftermath of 9/11. Fascinating is the song "I Ain't Afraid," sung in English and Yiddish and arranged in the style of an African-American spiritual. The instrumental "Perets-Tants" reminds us of the enormous influence Jewish musicians had in the development of jazz.

The jump from New York klezmer to the Balkans is smaller than one might imagine. In Novi Sad, the capital of Vojvodina, resides Boris Kovac and his wide-ranging band La Danza Apocalyptica Balcanica. At its best, though this disc is uneven, Ballads at the End of Time (Piranha Musik PIR1787), conflates the toughness of Kurt Weill's The Threepenny Opera with Astor Piazzolla's sultry Argentine tangos with the time-warp chaos of author Douglas Adams. In tunes like "Danza Transilvanica," the mix of past and present, East and West, accordion and clarinet, is sultry and addictive.

There is much more to come. Next month sees the release of Bembeya Jazz (World Village 468013), the first disc in 13 years from the seminal 40-year-old Guinea superstar band Bembeya. The group tours the United States in August.

The spate of new releases is more than a coincidence.

"Zydeco has surged in the past eight years, and Spanish-language music is being well served," says Vietze.

"But that is just a beginning. The industry hasn't even begun to figure out what to do to meet the varied interests of America's huge Asian population. It's hard to get a read on who will be the next Buena Vista Social Club, but soon enough, someone will come along."

CAPTION: The Guinea superstar band Bembeya will release its first disc  in 13 years next month.