The Argentine Osvaldo Golijov is a “classical” composer whose work embraces a fascination with world music and electronica in a way that is similar to the artier end of pop. For pop, he firmly believes, is the most influential music these days.

“These are sad times for classical music,” he explains. “Once classical musicians influenced popular culture. Duke Ellington learnt from Debussy, Miles Davis learnt from Stravinsky, the Beatles learnt from Stockhausen. Nowadays we learn from them. The music of Radiohead, or Björk, or OutKast – it is so much more relevant and meaningful. And often it is so much more interesting than what goes under the name of ‘serious music’. It affects the culture in a way we don’t.”

We are in Chicago, where a recent concert performance of his flamenco-themed, Grammy-winning opera Ainadamar (Fountain of Tears), which will be performed in the UK next week, has received a ten-minute standing ovation. American critics have been breathless in their praise. And this endearingly nerdy maverick has become a cult idol to many of the world’s biggest pop stars. David Bowie has described him as “the greatest living composer”; Jonny Greenwood, of Radiohead, is a fan; Paul Simon and David Byrne turn up to his concerts.

Björk described his music as “simply thrilling” – she was at a recital of Golijov’s reading of St Mark’s Passion in New York, scribbling notes as she listened to his sonic riot of Latin American rhythms, Gregorian chants, folksy choral work, Philip Glass-style minimalism and a libretto that switched between Spanish and Aramaic.

British critics, though, have been rather more suspicious of someone they regard as a genre-hopping charlatan. “They slashed my throat when I was there a couple of years ago,” Golijov laughs. “England has a bloodthirsty critical culture – they like to anoint a new virgin king of classical music and then behead him. But I also feel that when people hate you with such a vengeance you must be doing something important.”

Some critics suggest that the Boston-based Golijov’s exotic musical backdrops – flamenco, bossa nova, Afro-Cuban salsa and so on – are a distraction from the blandness of his composition. “I try to absorb lots of influences to create a lyrical narrative,” he responds. “But I believe that purity is a state you arrive at, and not a state from which you depart. You look at Mahler, how his music became more distilled from his first symphony to his ninth. I hope that my music will go through a similar process of distillation.”

Golijov was born 47 years ago in La Plata, in the province of Buenos Aires, to a Ukranian father and a Romanian mother, both Jews, who left Eastern Europe in the 1920s. He spent his early twenties in Jerusalem before moving to the US. He says his Jewishness provides “a tool for detached observation”.

“As a Jew growing up in a Roman Catholic country, I listened to classical music as an outsider. The music of Bach and all that followed is essentially hierarchical. It comes from the Catholic Mass, from the priest. I was raised in the chaos of a Jewish synagogue – a man screaming, a cantor wailing, another yelling at God, another mumbling. Then, as if by magic, a unison melody emerges and resolves again. So I am interested in the possibility of creative anarchy.”

As a result, Golijov’s interpretations of traditional religious material have taken on a different, often very politicised, subtext. His reading of St Mark’s Passion recast Jesus as a political martyr in the Che Guevara mould. Ainadamar explores similar territory of martyrdom, examining the life of Federico GarcÍa Lorca, the Andalusian poet and playwright killed by Franco’s forces during the Spanish Civil War. One of the most shocking and sonically thrilling moments is when Golijov dramatises Lorca’s death by firing squad, composing a whole section around the repeated sample of a 1930s gunshot, rhythmically orchestrated into what he calls a “flamenco fugue”.

“By repeating the single gunshot,” he says, “it symbolises not just his murder, but the gunshots that killed thousands of people in the Spanish Civil War. It is a way of turning those deaths into some kind of musical structure.”

One death from which Golijov is still reeling is that of his friend Anthony Minghella. For the past year they had been collaborating on an opera called Daedalus, the future of which is now in doubt.

Not that Golijov is short of projects. Last year Francis Ford Coppola enlisted him to write a score for his film Youth Without Youth, and the two are now collaborating on the Argentina-set follow-up, Tetro. “My job is to write the music that Francis would write if he were a composer,” he says. “It’s his vision but, conversely, that allows me to explore many different areas.”

Exploring new areas inspires him. “A lot of what happens in our musicis bullshit. You have great craftsmen, you have these grand displays of musical athleticism. But where is the emotion? That is what I am looking for. That’s why I’d rather have David Bowie enjoying my music than some classical critics,” he laughs. “The same with Björk. Even when her music is rough and wild, like the first track on her latest album, Volta, it is like Picasso painting like a child. The emotion is there. I think we, as so-called classical composers, can learn from that.”

Ainadamar is at Symphony Hall, Birmingham (0121 7803333). April 10 2008; the Barbican (020-7638 8891), April 13 2008

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