Genghis Blues

This improbable campfire story from amateur documentarians Roko and Adrian Belic won the Audience Award at this year's Sundance Festival. It tells how Paul Pena, a blind blues singer/guitarist of Cape Verdean ancestry, fell in love with the peculiarly Tuvan art of throatsinging, which involves isolating overtones of the human voice so that a single singer can produce layers of sound. Pena has played with blues artists from John Lee Hooker to Bonnie Raitt, and he composed Steve Miller's hit "Jet Airliner." But when he came across a Tuvan song while monitoring Radio Moscow on his shortwave, he began collecting Tuvan recordings and learning to sing traditional songs. And when throatsinging legend Kongar-ol Ondar came to San Francisco, Pena met him there and got invited to an annual throatsinging competition. The cross-cultural antics that unfold once film crew touches down in remote Tuva -- now a neglected province of Russia -- are by turns hilarious, awkward, harrowing, and touching. We won't spoil the drama of the competition itself -- suffice to say that Pena earns the recognition he receives. And don't miss the companion CD, Genghis Blues, on TuvaMuch Records. At the Cable Car Cinema.
-- Banning Eyre