I’ll tell you now, I was mighty glad to see cushions on the pews. My ecumenical sorties into various churches and cathedrals don’t include memories of cushions. I admit it, when I walked up the aisle, I briefly succumbed to a moment of irrational fear; a fear of ass-numbing angst combined with childhood memories of church-induced narcolepsy. More so, I’m usually not one for choral groups, nor cathedrals for that matter – unless, of course, they have flying buttresses (the cathedrals, not the choral groups.)

I am quite fond of flying buttresses. I think I just like saying the words “flying buttress” — it has such a nice ring to it. Unfortunately, they’re not something that comes up often in casual conversation. It’s a shame. Someday, I’ll get to work it into a conversation. “Nice flying buttress you’ve got there,” I’ll say. “I dig the arches, man.”

Nevertheless, given the lack of flying buttresses, it was a surprise to find myself, in a cathedral, waiting for a choral performance. Little did I know I was in for a pleasant surprise, as good — perhaps even better — than a flying buttress.

As chance would have it, you see, I was at loose ends that particular evening in San Francisco. Chance is that way sometimes. So, when a friend offered a ticket I jumped. I’m a firm believer that opportunities not taken are opportunities lost. I despise lost opportunities. Moreover, it was this or cool my heels in that god-forsaken suburban wasteland known as Santa Clara. After a few trips to Santa Clara, my (somewhat) irrational fear of ending my years in a trailer park has been supplanted with an irrational fear of ending up as cubical monkey in Santa Clara or, worse yet, Palo Alto (shudder). The weather is nice though.

So it was chance — and the offer of dinner and a ticket — that brought me to hear the vocal sounds of Le Mystere des Voix Bulgares – once known as “The Bulgarian State Television Female Vocal Choir.” (Obviously, they have wisely replaced their Soviet PR firm, Merrill, Lynch, Sacco, Vanzetti, and Brezhnev.)

Truly, there is magic in the human voice, a magic I like. Those who know me know I love the sultry sounds of jazz and blues, singers like Madeline Peyroux, Melody Gardot, Corinne Bailey Rae, Nellie McKay; and Diana Krall. I even like Celtic Woman. There I fault genetic memory. I figure it stirs my Celtic genes or something. It makes me want to put on a kilt, drink mead, marry a red-headed woman, and swing a Claymore, not necessarily in that order. It makes me actually like the sound of bagpipes — a true sign of genetic insanity at its most fundamental.

I always figured the attraction was that, as a human, I am biased towards the sounds of other humans. (Despite what you may have heard, and despite liking the sounds of bagpipes, I am human. I have the papers to prove it.) But, even with that bias, choral music is a stretch. I learned otherwise.

There is another magic that happens when the human voice twists and turns, wafting in and out of phase with other voices, waves and frequencies ebbing, flowing and colliding, dancing with the harmonic resonance of stone and steel. There is a magic in sounds produced by these twenty-four Bulgarian women; women who sing in amazing dissonance and harmony, crossing phase, droning and even chirping.

As the choir — 24 eclectically sized, shaped and aged women — sang, I heard woodwinds, and strings, and even the harmonic drone of a bag pipes. I heard the basso profundo of the bassoon, and the weedy trill of the clarinet. I heard the drag of a bow across the cellos midriff. I heard the wind, I heard the sounds of a village market, the sounds of love lost and found, and the sounds of a people tossed and turned on the juxtaposition of Europe and Asia. Yet, there were no instruments, no woodwinds, no strings; only the sound of the human voice; the voice as instrument.

In their voices, I heard a rich quilt of sounds and images, harmonic and dissonant, at once alien and yet with a familiarity I could taste. One could almost see the waves of sound cascade off the gothic fanned arches of the cathedral’s ceiling and ricochet off the pillars to vibrate the stain glass windows. I’d swear – when the currents of dissonance and harmony collided, I could feel it in my teeth as well as my soul.

In their voices, was the sound of the wind as it swept out of the Carpathians; in their voices was the call of the Muezzin wafting out of the Middle East, across Turkey, into the heart of Bulgaria. In their voices were the gentle chirped murmurs of a village market; in their voices was the call of the power and universal anguish of love and courtship, echoing across time. There was even a dissonance in the translated titles of the songs: these were top-forty Bulgarian hits that spoke volumes in name alone; songs with names like “The Old Lady is Growing Onion,” “I Feel Sleepy, I Want to Go to Bed,” and “Pigeons are Cooing.” Their simple song, in complex voice, was a beauty beyond; a sum greater than the individual parts. If I close my eyes, I can still hear the chords cascade; bouncing and echoing across time and space – the harmonic resonance of grace against stone and steel.

From those windows high atop the WAC, I could see the various pieces on the board, see the planned movements and strategies as the police set up barricades and as people in the streets ebbed and flowed in response. It was easy to imagine reaching down and flipping a white stone to black, and thus changing the game. The game of “Go” is that way — the placement of single piece — a single move — can change the outcome of the game.

Seattle holds many fond memories for me, but that day bordered on the surreal. That day, beside me were some of the major pieces in the game, including James Wolfensohn. All in all, in the room were more than a dozen representatives of Globalization, with a capital Gee. I felt like Zelig. I kept thinking to myself that, properly, I should be down in the streets, relishing the scent of teargas in the morning. We were talking about the synergies of philanthropy, technology, and collaboration; I was imagining teargas.

These are the thoughts that swirled about my head as I watched five rather amazing musicians take a stage last week in San Francisco. I was at a concert. In fact it was a week bookended by music. Tonight was Tinariwen. Yo-Yo Ma was next Saturday. In between, philanthropy, technology and collaboration; some themes don’t change it seems.

These five fellows, in flowing Boubou robes, covered head to foot, with turbans wrapped about their heads, were playing Fender electric guitars (now there’s a truly global export) singing a rap song with a distinct West African beat, in a mix of French and Arabic. As the klieg lights shone down on these troubadours, only their eyes showing, guitars flashing, I was struck by the true amazing fact that it was globalization that had put them there; it was globalization that put me there, as well.

And, there in the row in front of me — globalized — were five young quintessentially Californian women dancing and ululating like they had spent their formative years in the High Atlas rather than Marin County. I was struck by the contrasts, by the sense of living on an interconnected planet. I was struck by the facts of globalization; and once again, things are neither black nor white.

The five fellows were Tinariwen, an almost indescribable musical group of Touareg from the southern Sahara. The Tinariwen story sounds like fiction. Guns and guitars, Ghadaffi’s poet-soldiers, Stratocasters in one hand, and a Kalashnikov in the other; supposedly, together, they count 17 bullet wounds among them. These were the Touareg, the nomadic desert warriors, the blue men of the desert. Their songs are the soundtrack of the ishumar (from chômeur, French for “unemployed”). They are the Sahara’s Generation X; once Malian rebels, now full-time musicians. (They are not a Volkswagen, despite what you may have heard.)

On stage they’re an example of globalization beyond imagination, one of its consequences and one of its effects. It seems in music and the arts, where monolithic American culture has not run roughshod; we are experiencing a new renaissance. All hail rock and roll. All hail the magic mix of music that has me rocking to the Touareg one day, and gently enjoying Yo-Yo Ma the next. [This contrast and intersection is all the more poignant given Yo-Yo Ma's involvement with the "Silk Road" project.]

All around me that evening were the signs, the positive and negative effects of globalization. I rode to the concert in a Japanese hybrid and parked next to a fleet of others; I dined on a meal of sweet potato fries, California greens, topped with seared Ahi tuna, dressed with sesame seed oil and Japanese rice wine vinegar. I had a glass of French Viognier. I was wearing French shoes, a pair of jeans “engineered” in Germany (whatever that means) and made in Romania, and a Canadian shirt. And, I listened to the sounds of the desert, the raw tale of the Touareg, played on electric guitars made famous first by 1950′s rock and roll. Sub-Saharan nomads ripped from their lands, made unemployed and made famous by globalization.

I listened to the sounds of the desert, the sounds of a nomadic people displaced by the 21^st century, and the sounds of a people who suffer the fate of nomadic peoples all over the world.

From the Tinariwen web site (just that statement is amazing, when you think of it):

“…Forget the myths, forget the ‘guns-and-guitars’ fantasies and tales of blue-men on their camels. The humanity, the wonder and the epic sweep of the real Tinariwen story doesn’t need any photoshopping or romantic embellishments. It is the raw tale of an everyman, who was cut off from history and embraced the modern world, who lost his home and found solace in the guitar, who through pain and exile invented a new style of music that could express who he is and where he’s going. Nothing mythical or exotic about that. You can find the same story the world over…”

At the risk of showing my naiveté, clearly the effects of globalization are not all bad. Some are, in fact, grand. But others are frightening, and I often fear what we will lose, for lose we will, I fear. More so, I fear what the world will lose.

Moreover, I am, in fact, truly embarrassed by our current list of mainstream “cultural” exports. It is in music, culture, and entertainment where the west and the north are the great winners. We get better than we give. We trade the “O’Reilly Factor,” in return we get a richness and depth unplumbed. It’s striking and sad that we add so little of value to the trade, yet nevertheless seem to monopolize the market. Take Geraldo. I’ll gladly trade you Disco, the entire 1980′s, and Geraldo, for the richness of Mbaqanga, the pure energy of Tinariwen, and the sultriness of just about any French piano bar.

In this new world, where content is king, where creativity is the true currency, we seem to be rather impoverished.

Meanwhile, as I drive my Ford-but-really-Swedish car north today, into the Great Lakes winter, Afro-French-Arabic rap blaring out of an IPod (made in China no doubt); my imagination drives south, from Timbuktu to Essakane; perchance to the Festival in the Desert, and I remember: the placement of a single piece can change the whole game.