Rio Hayward
All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.
Anoushka Slater
While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.
jlongstreth-1
An inspirational tale of culture shock. Paul takes everything as it comes to him and assimilates it into his inner world while the outer world batters him this way and that. Music and the love of his friends and the Tuvan people carry Paul (mostly)safely through a great adventure. Love the story, the music is intriguing, the scenery is beautiful. The political back story is fascinating, understanding how the Tuvan people managed to hang on to their culture through the Soviet rule. The Feynman angle is strange and funny enough to believe. I remember my mother having some Tuvan postage stamps. My only quibble is with the production values-they do not live up to the beauty of the tale.
shandrick
Genghis Blues is a mythic tale of a musician seeking the source of a musical sound that haunts him. At the depths of his despair he re-engages with life when he hears a short-wave radio program with a singing that captures his spirit. For the next 12 years he persists in his research trying to find the source of the singing he heard. Step by step, he finds the path and this is the story of that search.Blind since he was a young man, Pena had carved out a journeyman's career playing blues behind many leading acts in his day. But the filmmakers find Pena, a recent widower, in a state of depression and one goal in mind. Together, the producers fashion an expedition to find the source of that sound, bringing together an array of synchronous events and people that would one day make this film in a place few people would ever think of visiting. The story is troubling and dark, as is the world of Pena, but throughout this remarkable journey Pena finds the light in the eyes of others a world away. A foreigner with no sight, he wavers in his ambitious plan momentarily, but finds the courage to make the music that eluded him his whole life. This is the story of one's man's dream come true in the worst of situations, showing how the voice of the human spirit remains alive in a sound.
piechart2000
Buena Vista Social Club, did you see that? It was cool but looking back it now seems like a big advert for the soundtrack album. Genghis Blues is also a musical journey of discovery but seemingly without the end goal of $$$$. This documentary is a rare treat. Paul Pena is fascinating, a bind blues guitarist who heard Tuvan musicians on his sw radio and then made a brave step into the unknown by setting out to find them. Cultures collide in style as the Tuvans and the San Franciscan get tuned up and create some mean throat-singing blues. Great music, great humour.
Bruce Burns
In 1995, an eclectic group of San Francisco musicians and their friends took a trip to the remote Russian-Mongolian region of Tuva, where one of them entered a throat-singing contest. The whole thing was filmed and this is the result.Paul "Earthquake" Pena is a blind San Francisco blues singer-guitarist-harmonica player who has worked with the likes of B.B. King, Jerry Garcia, John Lee Hooker, Bonnie Raitt, and T-bone Walker. In the early '70's, he made a rock album that included the song "Jet Airliner", later covered and made into a hit by the Steve Miller Band. The important thing about Pena, as far as this film is concerned, however, is that he is a self-taught master of Tuvan-style throat-singing.Throat-singing is a style of singing where one sings two or three notes at once, with some very interesting harmonic effects. As pointed out in examples in the film, the sounds are similar to nose-flutes, Jews-harps, Australian dijeridoos, and leaf-blowers.Pena's adventures begin when he goes to a concert in Frisco given by Kongar-al Ondar, who is described as the Elvis of Tuvan throat-singing. Ondar hears Pena sing and invites him to go to Tuva to compete in a throat-singing contest. A somewhat bizarre organization known as the Friends of Tuva arranges the trip for Pena, his trombone-playing friend, a recording engineer, and an eccentric elderly DJ. They also arrange to have the trip filmed by Roko Belic and his brother.The film is mostly about how Pena wins the hearts of Tuvans by singing traditional Tuvan folk songs, and then combining the singing style with the Delta blues he specializes in. It also concentrates on the friendship that is forged between Pena and Ondar.While this is not exactly top-of-the-line stuff (Hi-Def video just ain't no substitute for film), and we never really learn about anyone besides Pena and the late physicist Richard Feynman, who co-founded the Friends of Tuva, this is truly a fascinating movie, so I gave it an 8.
