Genghis Blues
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Genghis Blues (1999) is a documentary film directed by Roko Belic. It centers around the people of Tuva and features singer/guitarist Paul Pena and Tuvan throatsinger Kongar-ool Ondar. It won the 1999 Sundance Film Festival Audience Award for a Documentary. It was also nominated for an Academy Award in 2000 in the Best Documentary Feature category.
The documentary captures the inspiring story of blind blues musician Paul Pena and his discovery of throatsing, the Tuvan art of manipulating overtones while singing to make higher frequencies more distinguishable, essentially making it possible to sing two notes at once. Pena, over the course of several years, taught himself to throatsing to a very impressive degree. He eventually attended a concert of throatsinging and after the concert impressed one of the throatsingers, Kongar-Ol Ondar, so much with what he had taught himself that Kongar-Ol invited him to Tuva, a province of Russia, a formerly independent country and the home of throatsinging to sing in the triennial throatsinging festival held there. The entire journey is captured in the documentary, as well as the extraordinary mix of cultures and music in a land where sons are still named "Chengis" after Genghis Khan, visited by a man who jammed with John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters, T-Bone Walker and B.B. King.
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