Perhaps this recent episode, this “mad” Mariah Carey, is her latest, most baroque creation yet. After all, the archetypal diva, from her operatic beginnings to her current incarnations, is defined by her tragedy. She exists ever precariously in that gleaming place where delusion shades into madness Now that would be a good subject for a film.. Even before 11 September, cellist Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road project was going to be one of 2001’s more intriguing music stories.

Since then, this ambulant event has gained newly urgent significance. And what is it? I caught it on its recent touch-down in Schleswig-Holstein, and these were some of the things I found:

Even before 11 September, cellist Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road project was going to be one of 2001’s more intriguing music stories. An Azerbaijani mugham-singer blending his voice with violins to reflect a stunning musical amalgam. A rock musician from Beijing adding the sound of his sheng mouth-organ to the timbre of a cello.The original Silk Road ran from the Chinese capital of Chang’an to the Mediterranean city of Tyre, and its traffic was in consumer goods – silks and spices – plus a huge variety of arts and sciences including ceramics, gunpowder and mathematics.

In Ma’s view, this was in effect a medieval precursor of the internet: a multi-layered conduit for the global dissemination of ideas.Ma’s own Silk Road was directly inspired by his travels. Like the connection between the Japanese biwa and the Arabic oud. Delving recently into the cello’s precursors, he found himself propelled towards the kamancheh – the Persian spike-fiddle – and thence to the Chinese erhu, and to the Tuvan horse-head fiddle “World after world opened up,” he says with a manic glint. “And became possible to explore.”That’s what Ma is doing, with this collaborative project which girdles the globe. Next year’s goal is a massive presence at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington;until then, a long series of events in “partner cities” is planned. The musicological aim is to see how instruments have mutated from country to country, but the artistic aim is a gigantic East-West fusion.No question about how the West will benefit.

Since our home-grown tradition has run into the sand, we have to look beyond our ramparts. Anyone in doubt has only to consider the way Western composers are grasping at new sounds and forms to recharge their creative batteries.The intended benefits to musicians and audiences on all points East will be of a different sort. As the project’s executive director Ted Levin observes, the musics of Central Asia are now menaced by the onslaught of mass-entertainment from the West. He hopes that by holding festivals of newly-commissioned works in their cities, the project’s Asian and Western musicians – picked for what he calls their “bi-musicality” – will boost local cultural pride. Traditional music, he says, can be a glue to hold embattled communities together.Ma constantly reiterates his determination that the project should avoid politics, but he admits that in the present situation that’s well-nigh impossible. “But when other engines of dialogue have broken down, that’s when culture can really go to work. That what you value is the country’s cultural life, that you want to hear from Kazakhstan’s musicians.” Indeed, it’s hard to imagine a better riposte to the military and economic weaponry which is currently being unveiled.Both Levin and Ma are adamant that their goal is more than mere fusion, in the smart Western sense of the word.