By Camille T. Taiara

ON A BALMY , late-summer night last year, during my first trip to the Middle East, I discovered the most enchanting music. It was at the modest apartment of a Palestinian artist and newfound friend who'd invited a small group over for dinner. I'll never forget the moment: sipping on a glass of arak and listening to the mesmerizing sounds emanating from Mahmoud's paint-splattered boom box as I stared through open porch doors at the vast Damascus skyline, with its miles of Soviet-style, concrete buildings interrupted by the occasional mosque's green-lit minaret. The musical score, I was later told, dated back thousands of years and had been discovered in the Iraqi desert by a team of archaeologists who'd translated it into modern-day notation. It was then performed by a European symphony (they didn't know which).

"It conveys a profound solitariness, yet with the understanding that we're part of something much bigger than our individual selves," I told another guest at the time.

"You, my dear, are a Sufi," he responded.

Back home many months later, I popped a CD into my own boom box and was taken back to that moment in Mahmoud's apartment.

The cultural references were different. Others might call the music's spiritual message by another name – referring instead, perhaps, to Buddhism's tenet that "all is one," or to American Indian spiritual beliefs that what we in the modern West call God can be found in the earth and sky and everything around us.

But listening to Luis Monterrosa's songs, it was evident: he's a Sufi too.

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Monterrosa, who goes by the stage name the Genie, is quickly becoming an underground icon in San Francisco these days – playing at house parties, galleries, cafés, and wherever else they'll give him a chance. His instruments: a guitar, a sampler, and a mic. His technique: scratch guitar, a term he made up to refer to his distinctive playing style.

"I make everything from scratch," he told me. "Also, I'm emulating turntablism techniques."

The Genie usually begins by beat-boxing into a mic and looping the beat into a sampler to set the percussive groundwork, then layering in a string of guitar notes. This becomes the musical base over which he plays slide guitar. His music comes off as a melodic fusion of hip-hop, Latin rock, and electronica, and, in the case of "Grenada," even includes an element of Southern twang.

The result is mesmerizing and, somehow, profoundly human – as if he were giving sound to some intimate yet universal quality shared across time and cultural divides.

With diverse cultural reference points and without much left by way of family, the Guatemalan American Genie has developed a sense of interconnectedness that doesn't rely merely on blood ties or a shared history. And while he'll point to Prince, Metallica, and particularly Carlos Santana as his earliest musical influences, supplemented in recent years by local underground DJs (Shadow, QBert, Shortkut, and MixMaster Mike), his is much more than a mere patchwork of styles. It's a reflection of his political consciousness, extensive travels (to Palestine, Colombia, and Brazil), and the lack of a psychological home.

In that sense, the Genie resembles a Mission District homeboy version of Manu Chao – a globe-trotting musical nomad influenced by a profound concern for social justice coupled with the insights garnered from experiencing different perspectives, sensibilities, and ways of life.

Also like Chao, the Genie launched his solo career playing at Metro stations – albeit in Montreal two years ago rather than in Paris during the mid-1980s. Then one day he spied a flyer for the Montreal DMC/Technics World DJ Championships turntable competition at the venerable Club Soda. "I just crashed it," he recalled. "And someone who was supposed to perform couldn't, so they were down for me to play."

The Genie's unique performance caught the attention of DJ Horg, one of the competition's judges, who signed him on for a record deal. The result was Rebel Music (High Life Music), the Genie's first album, which comprises seven original instrumentals.

Appropriately, the album opens with an excerpt from Frontiers of Fears and Dreams, Mai Masri's 2001 documentary about two young Palestinian girls: "My dream is to one day find a lamp with a genie inside who would turn me into a bird so I could fly away," Mona Zaaroura, a 13-year-old from the Shatila refugee camp in Beirut, Lebanon, says in Arabic.

Now the album's made its way to San Francisco, and the Genie is celebrating with an album-release party at StudioZ.tv that includes collaborations with Afro-Brazilian contemporary choreographer Paco Gomes and local vocalist Panacea, as well as an invitation for local rappers to freestyle at an open mic at the end of the night.

"Watch, this vato's gonna blow up in a year or two," local Chicano filmmaker Pepe Urquijo told me after the Genie played a set in Urquijo's living room during the latter's birthday party back in 2002.

He was right.

But to the Genie, it's not about that. It's about consciousness – about recognizing that we're all part of a greater whole, and struggling to create a more just, egalitarian, and humane world.

"I'm trying to reach people on an emotional level, more through their souls than through their brain," he said.

The Genie plays, with David Molina and special guests, Thurs/29, 9 p.m., StudioZ.tv, 314 11th St., S.F. $5. (415) 252-7666.