Genghis Blues
From AwardAnnals
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| Director(s) | Roko Belic |
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| Distributor | New Video Group |
| Honors | |
| The ancient art of Tuvan throat singing may not sound like the most scintillating subject for a movie, but for those wishing to immerse themselves in a different culture or meet remarkable people, this inspiring and exhilarating Oscar-nominated documentary will be pure pleasure. This is a story no Hollywood screenwriter could have imagined. Paul Pena is a blind San Francisco blues singer who has played with the likes of John Lee Hooker and Jerry Garcia (he also penned “Jet Airliner,” which Steve Miller covered). One night while listening to his shortwave radio,… | |
Honors
Reviews
Amazon.com
The ancient art of Tuvan throat singing may not sound like the most scintillating subject for a movie, but for those wishing to immerse themselves in a different culture or meet remarkable people, this inspiring and exhilarating Oscar-nominated documentary will be pure pleasure. This is a story no Hollywood screenwriter could have imagined. Paul Pena is a blind San Francisco blues singer who has played with the likes of John Lee Hooker and Jerry Garcia (he also penned “Jet Airliner,” which Steve Miller covered). One night while listening to his shortwave radio, he picked up a Radio Moscow broadcast and heard the mesmerizing, gutteral sound of throat singing, which is peculiar to Tuva’s region of upper Mongolian. Enthralled, he became a master of this obscure art form. Enter Friends of Tuva, a curious group that included Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman, who likewise had become fascinated with Tuva. In 1993 they sponsored a San Francisco appearance by Tuvan singers. Pena was in the audience and met with the singers afterward. Pena so impressed the Tuvans that he was encouraged to come to Tuva and participate in its annual festival competition. Genghis Blues chronicles this incredible journey. Pena’s performance is as joyous and triumphant as the Buena Vista Social Club’s Carnegie Hall concert, but this is more than just a one-note concert film. It also movingly charts Pena’s friendship with revered Tuvan singer Kongar-ol Ondar (whose stature is described as “John F. Kennedy, Elvis Presley, and Michael Jordan rolled into one”). Documentarians Roko and Adrian Belic modestly profess they were ill equipped to make this documentary. They may have a point, but would you pass up such an opportunity? —Donald Liebenson
Barnes and Noble
An arresting and warm portrait of a musical friendship, Genghis Blues follows the journey of blind bluesman Paul Pena, who went to Tuva (a tiny country wedged between Mongolia and the former Soviet Union), to compete in its annual throat-singing contest. Having first heard the sound of throat-singing on a Radio Moscow broadcast via shortwave in the early 1980s, Pena eventually mastered the style, flooring the 1992 champion, Kongar-ol Ondar, with a spontaneous performance after one of the latter’s concerts. These two extraordinary men and their spooky vocal techniques—throat singing is multi-harmonic and has been likened to “a bullfrog swallowing a whistle” and a “one-man quartet”—are the main characters of Genghis Blues, but there’s more. Paul Pena’s story dovetails with that of Richard Feynman, the eccentric physicist who was perhaps the first Westerner to celebrate the wonders of Tuva and throat-singing. Tuva, in this tale, takes on the dimensions of Shangri-la, the hidden land of Lost Horizon.The music is otherworldly and the movie (which won prizes at over a dozen world film festivals and garnered an Academy Award nomination) is as fascinating as it is charming. Eddy Crouse
