There’s a chance you’ve never heard of the Jonas Brothers, and if you’re younger than 15, there’s a chance you don’t have a Jonas Brothers poster hanging in your bedroom. But the chances of either are slim.

The teen pop trio from New Jersey have released three chart-topping albums in the last three years and inspire the sort of lust, obsession, and mass fainting spells that make comparisons to the Beatles inevitable.

While the dreamy sibs have certainly achieved success overseas, we wondered if the boy band equation (cute young guys + catchy tunes = $) holds true in other regions of the world. The answer? Definitely.

Here’s a sampling from around the globe:

Band Name: Jal

Bio: These three Jonas Brothers look-alikes hail from Pakistan. Their style is modern rock with Urdu lyrics and a touch of traditional melodies.

Backstory: In Urdu, “Jal” means water. According to the band, “The name affirms the intimate connection of water to the rhythm of our lives.”

Bigness: They were named Best Rock Band in Pakistan at the 2006 Indus Music Awards and have found enormous crossover success in India.

Beliefs: “Seeing the kind of love we get in India, we are just left wondering who makes all this fuss about [the] India-Pakistan relationship,” says lead singer Farhan Saeed Butt.     

Band Name: Camila

Bio: Based in Mexico City, the trio brings American rock and R&B influences to their highly personal ballads.

Backstory: Leader Mario Domm is a producing prodigy who decided to form his own band. As for the moniker: “We liked the contrast of having a female name with three dudes on the stage,” says band member Samo.

Bigness: The three landed a contract with Sony BMG and have sold over a million records. They embarked on their first U.S. tour last summer and sang on a Kenny G album.

Beliefs: Domm said recently, “I think Mexico is in a moment of musical evolution. The record companies in Mexico are supporting artists that are doing original songs that aren’t prefabricated, and this helps a lot for a singer-songwriter who has something to say and gets up on stage and says it.”

Band Name: Sonohra

Bio: This Italian duo—two brothers, Luca and Diego— write their own music and lyrics, wrapped up in a pleasing package of flat-ironed hair and skinny ties.

Backstory: Sonohra is obsessed with the U.K., setting songs in England and Ireland and counting Brit bands (the Beatles, Coldplay) among their musical idols. The name comes from “suono ora," or "sound now." If you really want to know, their official site says: "The name of the duo, Sonohra, itself contains many meanings: it is called the Sonora desert which borders the state of California, [it] refers to the concept of music without discrimination, and [it means] "sound now."

Bigness: The boys won the Youth category at the 2008 San Remo Song Festival and were nominated for Best Italian Act at the MTV Europe Music Awards.

Beliefs: Their hit song "I Believe" reflects hope for the environment. "The subject is the man's greed that is destroying nature," says the duo. "But we 'believe' that man will be able to repent in time to avoid such a disaster."

Band Name: Big Bang

Bio: This five-member boy band is hugely popular in Korea, where young fans worship their R&B sound and edgy fashion sense.

Backstory: The guys were part of a “Making the Band”-style TV show that chronicled the group’s preparation for their debut.

Bigness: Tickets for their second concert tour, “Big Bang Is Great,” sold out in ten minutes, and the single “Lies" is so popular that Korean students sing it to their teachers when they forget their homework.

Beliefs: Big Bang is pro-ocean: In the video for "Sunset Glow," the boys wave signs reading "Let's Go West" and lead mobs of fans to the western beaches of Taean, cleaned up but still neglected by tourists after an oil spill in December 2007.

-Winona Dimeo-Ediger

Well, you can tell by the way I use my hands
I’m a CPR man: inspired by a band
The Bee Gees keep my pumping right
Whether it is day or night
All I do
Is match the beat
103 times a minute,
Then repeat.
And you’ll be stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive.
Ah, ha, ha, ha, stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive.
Ah, ha, ha, ha, stayin’ alive.

Why is “Stayin’ Alive” stuck in our head? Because a new study from the University of Illinois medical school shows that the beats per minute in that Bee Gees song from Saturday Night Fever is just about a perfect match for the number of chest compressions recommended by the American Heart Association. The AHA says 100 chest compressions per minute is the goal. “Stayin’ Alive” has 103 beats a minute.
People are sometimes afraid to perform CPR because they don’t know how to keep the right rhythm. Now we all know what it should be.

We just have one question: If “Stayin’ Alive” can keep you alive, then how come disco died?

-Marc Silver

The geography of music is definitely changing.

Case in point: jazz clarinetist and saxophonist Anat Cohen. Born in Israel, she fell in love with Dixieland music in junior high school, thanks to an instructor/conductor who favored traditional jazz. She’s also been influenced by great modern saxophone players like Dexter Gordon and John Coltrane. She sometimes plays traditional Israeli songs. She tosses in the Portuguese-influenced melodies and African beat of Brazilian choro. There’s a bit of Argentina's tango, too. And she’s a fan of “the sound and power” of a big band.

But she’s not a style hopper: “My goal is to find one way of combining everything,” says Cohen, who’s lived in New York since 1996 and slyly gives her age as “30-plus.”

“Music is a real melting pot,” she adds. “This is the soup mix I have in me. I’m going to mix this soup, and maybe tomorrow have a different mix. Maybe it needs more salt, more African, a little bit more Brazilian.”

Critics are happy with her cooking. Billboard calls her a “reed virtuoso.” The Washington Post raves over her “remarkable lyricism.” She can swing, too. “The secret is to really get inside the rhythm and feel it with your body, your complete self,” she says. “You’re going to start bouncing up and down. That is swinging!”

Cohen is emblematic of a new and eclectic Israeli music scene. “I think people in general are surprised at the amount of musicians from such a small country,” she says. “It’s actually nice. I’m very proud.”

This groundswell of new music from Israel is a sign of the shrinking world. “As a kid growing up, the U.S. was so far, the only way you could be there was to fly there. There was no Internet, and rarely would [foreign] musicians come by.”

Music is also a way to bridge the divide between Israelis and Palestinians. “There are quite a bit of exchanges,” says Cohen. “The goal is to combine the musicians. Sometimes they have to meet in other places than Israel, but there are many more exchanges than there used to be. As a kid, I sometimes would hear Arabic music, and people would say, ‘Oh, turn that off.’ It’s nice that young Israeli musicians are not afraid to use the sound.”

Anat Cohen will be playing at New York's venerable Village Vanguard from October 21 to 26. Her latest CD is Notes from the Village, featuring original compositions as well as standards like Fats Waller's "Jitterbug Waltz."

-Marc Silver

Marcia Ball will be cooking on two fronts this weekend at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington, D.C. On Saturday night and Sunday afternoon, the award-winning rhythm-and-blues singer/pianist will represent her native Texas with several musical performances and a couple of cooking demos. Pop Omnivore will be there and promises to post her recipes for “emergency gumbo and shrimp remoulade”—ready in half an hour, Ball says. Here’s what the lanky Texan had to say about music, food, and life after Katrina.

You’re part of the delegation representing the culture of Texas. What is Texas music?

Texas music is as big as Texas itself. All the influences that make up the music of an entire country come to play in Texas. We have Cajun and Czech and Mexican and some of the roots of the blues and soul music and rap and, of course, western swing and cowboy music.

There are Czechs in Texas?

There’s tons of Bohemians and Czechs here in Texas. We have a huge polka crowd. The Germans came to Texas in one of the first migrations, in the 1830s. They also came to Mexico, which is why Mexico has such good beer (and why Mexico has a great beer called Bohemia). They brought the accordion with them when they came. And the accordion came from Mexico up through Texas to New Orleans.

What makes your music Texas?

I represent the Cajun culture that doesn’t stop at the [Louisiana] state line but is very strong all the way into east Texas and all the way to Houston.

You’ve got a lot of New Orleans in your music.

I grew up listening to Fats Domino and Huey “Piano” Smith and all the great stuff that came out from New Orleans, and my grandmother was a ragtime player from Lafayette.

Did you study piano?

I took lessons when I was a kid, but like everybody else I quit when I was about 14. I started chasing boys and playing sports and stuff. Then I got into a rock-and-roll band, and after a while started playing piano.

You’ve often classified as a blues pianist, but your music isn’t at all down and out.

It’s New Orleans–style rhythm and blues; it’s got that energy and jump to it.

Your new album is called Peace, Love & BBQ. How come “barbecue” is up there with “peace” and “love”?

The song is about home, about country, about family—about anything you do in the yard where friends and family gather and eat and play music.

Do you have any secrets to making good barbecue?

Oh yeah—I let my husband do it! That’s my secret. My husband is the true cook and true foodie in this family. You know two-alarm chili? My husband’s father, Wick Fowler, started it.

Like many musicians from the Gulf Coast, you wrote a song, “Ride It Out,” that alludes to Hurricane Katrina on your new CD. But isn’t it time to move on?

Those people are still in distress. It’s not over, and we don’t need to move on; we need to move on it. I’m going to play with Tab Benoit and the group he calls Voices of the Wetlands at the opening of the Democratic Convention to address the need to restore our wetlands, to turn attention to the fact that they’re critical to the security and safety of our coastal country, and to our food and our resources. If you like shrimp, eat ’em now [unless] we do something about the wetlands.

Are you unhappy with the government’s response?

For the last eight years, [we’ve had] a government that doesn’t seem to much care about its people. I don’t know if you want to get me started on that.

-Marc Silver

Musical fusion takes many forms. But have you ever heard punk rock blended with bhangra and klezmer? Probably not—unless you’re a fan of Firewater, a punk band out of Brooklyn whose musical reach extends across the Middle East and Asia. Its founder and lead singer/songwriter, Tod Ashley, better known as Tod A, set out in 2005 and traveled overland from India through Pakistan, and into Istanbul and Israel. Along the way, he met lots of local musicians who were happy to share their songs.

The resulting album is Firewater’s The Golden Hour— a zingy distillation of worldwide influences, anchored by the band’s essential punk roots and disaffected lyrics. Tod edited it in cheap hotel rooms at night after the sessions, and mixed and produced it in Tel Aviv with drummer Tamir Muskat from Balkan Beat Box. What makes the CD really shine is the mixture of flashes and bursts from Tod’s impromptu recording sessions with a bunch of unknown musicians, and the way he's managed to break down borders in countries where few musicians could ever imagine having the chance to perform with foreign counterparts. (As Tod notes in a publicity video, “Even though Israelis can’t go to Pakistan and Pakistanis can’t go to Israel… somehow a bunch of Pakistanis and a bunch of Israelis wound up playing on the same record.” Surely a first.)

Firewater performed earlier this month in Washington, D.C. Before they went onstage, I sat down with Tod  in Firewater’s big white van, parked outside the Black Cat club, while he smoked cigarettes and answered a few questions.

Your music is variously described as punk klezmer, world punk, and probably a few other things I can’t even imagine. How do you define it?

World punk is probably not a bad label to have stamped on it. To me, punk rock is not about piercings or tattoos. It’s about honesty of delivery and stripping off all the b.s. and trappings and frosting, and delivering something really from the heart that’s direct. Some of most amazing punk rock bands are the Mexican banda or the Indian wedding bands. They’ve got that energy where you feel a person’s soul is being laid on the line. That’s punk rock for me and that’s where I take my inspiration from, no matter from what country.

Qawwali, the Indian subcontinent’s ecstatic, devotional Sufi music, has a searing emotional quality, too. People around the world used to flock to performances by the late, great Pakistani qawwali singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, even though they couldn't understand the lyrics. Were you already a fan of that music?

Yeah. But you know, I’m not a musicologist. I came into it a bit like a tourist. It’s a part of the world I didn’t know about but my government has been interacting with in a big way. I went there because I was curious, more than anything. I was going in as a blank slate, with no preconceptions—just a musician, hopefully with an open mind. The main impetus for the trip was not to make a record but to take a trip. As it happened, I got really lucky and got some great stuff.

How did you meet the musicians you ended up recording?

A lot of it was chance and luck. I would just go into a town and start asking around at my hotel or sometimes at shops. I met a guy on the street in Lahore. It was the first day of the monsoon and the skies opened up. So me and this guy took shelter under a roof and he pulled out a cigarette and I asked him for a light. It turned out he was a tabla and harmonium teacher. I recorded at his house and in his courtyard, with chickens running through, and goats.

One night that was kind of amazing was a Sufi night in a village outside Lahore. It was kind of a battle of the bands, different groups would come in and start playing, and they’d really get smoking and people would gather around. Then someone else would start. I was surreptitiously recording and there’s a little snatch of that at end of "This Is My Life."

Few of these musicians spoke English. How did you communicate with them?

The translations were a bit like playing telephone. Sometimes I’d just make noises with my mouth and whip out my acoustic guitar and give them an idea of what I was after. Most of these guys had never been recorded. They play at weddings, nautch [dance] parties, whatever gigs they could get to get some extra money. They’re from little villages. I couldn’t afford famous studio musicians so I was just looking for real down-home folks.

With the lack of language, a lot of times it’s just communication between musicians with the eyes—a lot of smiling. I felt somehow it rose above politics and borders in some small way.

Pakistan and Israel were both founded around the same time, both as religious homelands. Did you find musical similarities between the two countries?

I’m an atheist but I love a lot of religious music. For me it was almost a similar learning experience to understand a country like Israel and a country like Pakistan. There’s a soul that comes from religiously inspired music that I really get off on. It’s the honesty and letting it out in a very unpretentious way that both countries share.

What were the main things you learned from the musicians you met?

To listen a bit more. My schooling in traditional music comes from records and radio and things I dug up and found myself. These guys have an apprentice system. Every band I worked with had old guys in their 70s, and guys maybe 14 or 15 years old, and every age in between. Gypsy bands work the same way. They watch and listen and absorb it, till the young guys become the 70-year-olds. That was cool to watch. We don’t do it that way in this country.

Pakistan’s technically a dry country. Were you able to find firewater?

I went to buy a six-pack and was offered a rocket launcher. I said, “No. I’m here to buy a six-pack.”

Did you travel much growing up?

I was raised all over. I was born in South Carolina and grew up in Massachusetts, New Jersey, Vancouver, Wales. My mother’s a geologist. She travels a lot now, more than I do. She’s worked in Antarctica and right now she’s in Kenya, in the Rift Valley.

You didn’t want to follow in her professional footsteps?

Well, you know, I went into rock.

-by Hannah Bloch

I recently saw a hippo and rhino go head to head in the heart of Washington, D.C.

To be more precise, I saw a band called Flight of the Conchords perform their rap-folk crossover hit "Hiphopopotamus vs. Rhymenoceros."

If you choose to proceed
You will indeed concede
Cause I hit you with my flow,
the wild rhino stampede ….

They call me the Hiphopopotamus,
with flows that glow like phosphorous
popping off the top of this
esophagus
rockin' this metropolis …

I've been a diehard fan of this two-man folk novelty band from New Zealand since I first saw their HBO series, also called Flight of the Conchords, last June. The show chronicles their hilarious efforts to break into the New York City music scene. These brilliantly awkward everymen are gifted musical satirists, with a Grammy to show for it, and a newly released eponymous CD.

Meanwhile, it turns out that the two big-boned vegetarians, by which I mean the rhino and the hippo, have a long history in the Big Apple. Scott Sendrow, a park historian for New York City, helped me uncover the early years.

It seems a hippo was the first of the two to mark the city's turf. In the 1800's the zoo was more or less a parking lot for circuses. The big top kept ownership of their animals but conveniently lent them out for display (and feeding) during the off-season. A hippo was the first zoo animal to belong to the city; in 1892 a new director bartered off the hippo's calves to build a city-owned menagerie. The exchange rate at the time: one young hippo was worth a lioness, a Siberian tiger, two leopards, two Indian antelope, two pelicans, and, showing some prescient fashion sense, a pair of pumas.

Then came the rhinos. A team sent from New York to nab one from eastern Africa in 1911 described their task as the equivalent of  "lassoing a locomotive." A few years later a double horned rhino with the handle "Old Smiles" retired to the zoo from a country circus but still had enough grit to menace a group of keepers trying to dress him with a crown made from parsley. A rhino named Bessie, in residence in the Bronx Zoo in the 1930s, caught the eye of renowned animal sculptor Katherine Lane Weems, who was commissioned by Harvard University to immortalize her in bronze – twice.

The Conchords ultimately don't settle the rhino-hippo showdown, but it's fair to say both animals end up better off than the elephant, who gets a shoutout in the track "Robots"—a good news/bad news glimpse into a robot-dominated world where there is no more unethical treatment of the elephants, because, well, there are no more elephants.

-Brad Scriber

Photo by Amelia Handscomb

As a huge fan of both U2 and African pop music, I couldn’t wait to hear “In the Name of Love: Africa Celebrates U2.”

I was also a little worried. In this tribute CD, African pop artists cover U2 hits. But a lot of African pop falls into boring, easy-listening territory. And I’ll admit it – U2 has put out some boring songs, too. Bring the two together, and you can get either an interesting new take on a popular song, or a big collision of dull.

First, the duller news. Several tracks fall into the category of elevator music. I’m not sure a brass section improves the classic “Where the Streets Have No Name.” While singer Angelique Kidjo’s version of “Mysterious Ways” is fine, the arrangement is considerably less adventuresome than the original.

The cooler songs are those where the artist wanders farther afield. “One” takes on a new edge with Nigerian Keziah Jones’s sharp vocals. “Pride (In the Name of Love)” was apparently just crying out to be sung in the South African a cappella tradition: the Soweto Gospel Choir brings a lush choral sound to this powerful anthem. Les Nubians do a charming electronica-infused version of “With or Without You.” And in the hands of the African Underground All-Stars, “Desire” becomes a compelling hip-hop track about Africa’s yearning for peace and freedom.

The album wraps up with Angolan singer Waldemar Bastos’ take on “Love is Blindness.” His quavery vocals make this moody, slow song about love gone wrong even more haunting. Bastos fled Angola, which has been at war for decades, and now lives in Portugal; the song echoes the pain of his native country while evoking a Portuguese love song.

If the U2-Africa link sounds familiar, there’s a reason: Singer Bono’s work on behalf of Africa inspired the album, and part of the proceeds go to The Global Fund, which fights AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria in Africa.

LISTEN: "Pride (In the Name of Love)," sung by the Soweto Gospel Choir.

—Helen Fields

Last night I saw a movie. It was U2 3D, it was on the giant IMAX screen at a local museum, and it was SO GREAT. I'm a huge U2 fan, so my love for U2 3D has nothing to do with the fact, which I must mention, that National Geographic is distributing it. But I don't think you have to be a rabid U2 fan (or NG employee) to rock out to U2 3D.

The film brings a whole show to life, from the fans' arrival at the stadium to the encore. Rather than feeling gimmicky, the 3D feels like a perfectly natural way to watch a concert, even when lead singer Bono reaches out of the screen right at you. And it's so realistic that once or twice I thought the woman in the seat in front of me was waving her arms - but it was a fan in the stadium. The film uses footage from several 2006 shows in Latin America, shot in 3D with side-by-side cameras. (Watch closely and you'll see fans holding flags from the different countries where the movie was recorded.)

U2 is famous for putting on rousing, stadium-pleasing shows. Their anthemic rock music fills a big venue, as fans jump up and down and sing along. No comment on whether I sang along in the theater. On the 2005-2006 Vertigo tour, the band used a huge bank of screens to project animations, live videos of the band members, and other accompaniments to the music. In the movie, the animations sometimes come off the backdrop, hovering in front of the action or surrounding the band members. U2 shows are also famous for Bono's between-song lectures about poverty and world peace and the like, which did not make the cut. The focus stays on the music, which includes old favorites like "Where the Streets Have No Name" and material from their latest album.

The film gives you a view of the concert you'd never get as one person among thousands, from the box of tissues on a table next to drummer Larry Mullen Jr. to the set list taped on the Edge's keyboard. It's also exciting to see the show the way the band sees it - when a stadium lights up with tens of thousands of cell phones, it looks cool from the audience, but even more magical from the stage.

Unlike the old 3D movies, which caused many a headache, this one uses newer technology that doesn't strain the eyes. You still have to wear glasses, but they look like sunglasses instead of those goofy red-and-blue jobs. Ok, they still look goofy, but they do it with one lens color.

U2 3D is on IMAX screens now and opens at regular theaters next month.

—Helen Fields

Pop Omnivore’s pick for best song of 2007 is not the ubiquitous Umbrella.

It is “I Am a Gummy Bear.”

Never heard of it? Consider yourself lucky, because once you hear this bouncy, synthesizer-driven ditty, you will never ever ever get it out of your head. And that, to us, is the true test of a song of the year. Listen to this excerpt, if you dare, complete with video of a dancing green bear (tastefully clad in briefs).

Plus, “Gummy Bear” is a song that reflects National Geographic’s interest in the world we live in. Released in Hungary last year, it became the number one ring tone for eight months. It has been translated into many languages, including German, which is highly appropriate because really, is there a funnier sentence than “Ich bin ein Gummibär.” Also, the sticky candy was invented in Germany in 1922. “Gummibär” translates as “rubber bear.” Awww, how sweet.

Readers, we challenge you to name a song, domestic or international, that matches “Gummy Bear” for sheer infectiousness.

-Marc Silver

Here at Pop Omnivore, we are interested in evolution. Especially the evolution of the music video. Many years ago, long before the invention of MTV, the French invented something called a Scopitone.

A Scopitone is like a juke box that played "music cinema"—color 16mm films projected onto a TV-size screen. A hit in Europe, the Scopitone disappeared shortly after arriving in the United States in 1964.

Fortunately, you do not need to purchase a Scopitone to engage in this primitive video viewing. You can hit eBay and buy titles on DVD. Or simply go to the incredible Scopitone blog  and download them to your iPod.

Here at Pop Omnivore, we have a few favorites:

Ike Cole Salutes His Brother Nat "King" Cole

"Je M'eclate Au Senegal" by the Martin Circus

"Tijuana Taxi" by Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass

"St. Louis Blues" by Lou Rawls

French music videos from the '60s on your iPod? Just call it Web 0.2.

-Paul Heltzel