Musically, the Caribbean has always been one of the richest and most innovative regions on the planet. There, over centuries, African roots and rhythms have entangled with the traditions of Spain, France, the British Isles and even India. Some of the products of this musical melting pot, such as Cuba's mambo, son and rumba, had an enormous influence on American popular music and jazz in the Forties and Fifties. Other, more contemporary Caribbean musics, such as Trinidad's calypso and soca, Guadeloupe's zouk and Jamaica's reggae, now inspire briany pop composers like Peter Gabriel, Paul Simon, Sting and David Byrne.

This cultural exchange flows in two directions, as a sampling of recent Caribbean releases reveals. From Chuck Berry to the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, punk, disco and rap – all the major U.S. and U.K. pop trends of the last thirty years eventually wash ashore in the Caribbean. Turn on a Caribbean radio station, and you're as likely to get an earful of the Beatles or the B-52's as you are a salsa or a soca. Today, there's a whole generation of island musicians who can segue from acid rock to calypso, or from Dylan to merengue, without missing a beat. With the help of synthesizers, drum computers and other contemporary recording technology, they're creating exhilarating new music that fuses traditional tropical rhythms with modern rock and pop.

The Burning Flames, like many other Caribbean bands, used to make a living by dividing their time between two kinds of bread-and-butter gigs: Top Forty dates at the expensive tourist resorts on their home island, Antigua, and steamy sessions of calypso and soca for local private parties in the Caribbean and Brooklyn. What began as a schizophrenic "two bands in one" situation evolved into a neat amalgam of island rhythms, power guitars and synths, a quirky mix that plays to both the calypso and the rock audience. On their "Workey Workey," now a classic dance single in discos from South America to Miami, a slow-grind tropical groove breaks to eerie synthesizer lines straight off a 1970s Yes album. None of the other cuts on their major-label debut, Dig (a collection of remixed, previously released material), is as catchy or as seamless as "Workey Workey," but these young P-Funk-garbed genre busters have the potential to be the biggest Caribbean pop crossover since Harry Belafonte – especially if they would record their manic live-show calypso-izations of "Leaving on a Jet Plane" and "Blue Suede Shoes."

The Dominican Republic's Juan Luis Guerra is already a successful Caribbean crossover in the Spanish-speaking pop world, where his latest album Bachata Rosa dominates Top Ten charts from Argentina to Spain. Guerra, a graduate of Boston's Berklee College of Music, is a Paul Simon from the other side; a sophisticated verbal and musical whiz who spins the fast and raunchy merengue rhythms of his own country into elegantly structured pop jewels, glistening with layered harmonies, jigsaw-puzzle horn arrangements and leaping metaphoric images. "Burbujas de Amor (Bubbles of Love)" – a loopy, acoustic-guitar-anchored meditation on love, sex and fish – belongs on an all-time list of perfect pop songs, in any language. English-speaking pop audiences are beginning to discover Guerra's Beatles-league Caribbean classics.

Western pop plays only a small part in the exquisite and intense album Vodou Adjae, from Haiti's Boukman Eksperyans, but it is an important one. The searing, Hendrix-flavored guitar riffs, jittery keyboard patterns and wailing vocals that recall "Psycho Killer"-era David Byrne serve as familiar reference points for listeners who might otherwise be lost in the group's trancelike web of Haitian drums and percussion. From the band's perspective, its Carib-modern fusion is both artistic and political. Putting centuries-old Afro-Haitian melodies and rhythms in a contemporary context makes the point that Haiti's culture is as vital and relevant today as it was centuries ago, when the original Boukman called the slaves to revolt and sparked the revolution that made Haiti the West's first black republic. The band's Creole lyrics bite: One song, "Wet Chenn," says, "Get angry, break the chains"; another, "Se Kreyo'L Nou Ye," affirms that "we're people of the Kongo, let's not be ashamed of it." Boukman's most powerful song, "Ke'-m Pa Sote," became the driving anthem that helped roll the revolutionary priest Jean-Bertrand Aristide into Haiti's Presidential Palace earlier this year; here is a Caribbean band that makes not only music but history. (RS 612)

DAISANN MCLANE