Paul Pena is a blind Bluesman who played with Blues greats like T-Bone Walker, B.B. King and Bonnie Raitt, and also wrote Steve Miller's hit song Jet Airliner. In the depths of depression over the loss of his wife, he learns to operate a short-wave radio. He hears a very unusual type of music on Radio Moscow and discovers it is Tuvan throatsinging, from the Republic of Tuva, wedged between Siberia and Mongolia.
He teaches himself Russian so he can translate the Tuvan language, as there are no Tuvan-English dictionaries. He then goes on to teach himself throatsinging. A local San Francisco society, Friends of Tuva, hear him and record his booming voice. They also tell him of a throatsinging contest that takes place every three years in Tuva. It is arranged for Paul to travel to Tuva and sing in the contest. This documentary is the journal of Paul and his entourage on their 1995 adventure to Tuva.
Genghis Blues was nominated for the 2000 Best Documentary Feature Academy Award. It has already won awards at the Sundance, Telluride, and Rotterdam Film Festivals.
If your looking for Blues in this documentary, sorry, there is very little other than a small retrospective of his Blues career and his original version of Jet Airliner on the sound track that is better than Miller's version. It's the freaky Tuvan singing, where multiple voices emanate from a single singer, that's emphasized. But if you look closely you see the power of the Blues.
Everywhere he goes in Tuva, the people want to hear Paul sing. He is nicknamed The Earthquake for his massive voice. But Paul only has learned a few Tuvan songs, so when listeners demand more, he busts out into the Blues. The look on the local Tuvan faces as he moans the Blues is exactly the same look on your face as you listen to the funky throatsinging. A beautiful Blues moment.
