October 21, 2010, 10:23 am — Updated: 10:33 am -->
Popcast: CMJ, Shakira and Rock Globalism
By THE NEW YORK TIMES

This week on Popcast, The Times’s music podcast, we look at two rock ‘n’ roll globalists and highlight one of the more than 1,000 bands in New York this week for the CMJ Music Marathon.

Discussing his Arts & Leisure feature on Shakira, Jon Pareles, our chief pop critic, says that her multicultural hodgepodge is Shakira’s great strength. “She’s Lebanese-Italian-Colombian, and she’s at her best when all of those aspects are out,” he says in the conversation. “She’s very much an international creature, and it’s nice from a U.S. perspective to see someone who doesn’t want to be an American, doesn’t want to copy everything we do, but who has her own local flavor to add to it.”

And Eugene Hutz, the Ukrainian-born leader of the long-running New York Gypsy-punk band Gogol Bordello, talks about the immigrant’s experience, and “combating ignorance with true understanding of the planet.”

A look at globalism in rock, with Jon Pareles and a performance by Tamaryn.(mp3)
Also on Popcast, the New York-San Francisco band Tamaryn plays its song “Haze Interior” live in the studio and explains the CMJ whirlwind from an artist’s perspective. Ben Sisario is the host.