Genghis
Blues
Not
Rated
Cinema 21 , 616 NW 21st Ave. 223-4515
7 and 8:55 pm, Friday-Thursday, additional showings 1, 3 and
5 pm
Saturday-Monday, and 10:45 pm Saturday-Sunday. Sept. 10-16.
$6.
Genghis Blues is a movie that starts out small and
uninspiring, then becomes something more vast and illuminating
than you would ever have expected. Looking at first like just
another sloppy ethnographic film shot unremarkably on video,
the documentary could have simply been another boring history
lesson delivered with a humorless sensitivity to the studied
land and people. But it isn't, thanks largely to its subject,
an American blues musician named Paul Pena.
Fifteen years ago, the blind and poor San Franciscan was
listening to his short-wave radio one night when he came
across bizarre yet beautiful sounds emanating from Radio
Moscow. He heard khoomei, or Tuvan throatsinging,
a rare type of harmonic singing in which one singer warbles
out a variety of notes simultaneously in his throat. The
sound is a surreal cross between a didgeridoo and radio
feedback, amplified and softened by the human throat. Pena,
who had previously played "gutbucket scratchy blues" with
the likes of T-Bone Burnett and B.B. King, was captivated
by the sound and threw himself into learning how to make
it himself, in part as a distraction from his grief over
his wife's recent death. He found an obscure recording of
Tuvan throatsingers and doggedly taught himself how to sing
the music, learning Tuvan via Russian and Braille. His efforts
were rewarded in 1993, when the renowned Tuvan throatsinger
Kongar-ol-Ondar gave a concert in San Francisco and Pena
introduced himself. Impressed with Pena's incredible talent,
Ondar invited the bluesman to Tuva for the triennial throat-singing
contest in 1995.
The filmed document of the journey that followed, with
the filmmakers (brothers Roko and Adrian Belic) in tow,
is an exhaustive video diary that works less on aesthetics
than on feeling. Genghis Blues is not a carefully
constructed series of artful shots, but rather an example
of the wise filmmakers never turning their cameras off--a
Blair Witch-like project, only real and incredibly
moving, though sometimes almost as frightening.
The clinically depressed Pena is awestruck by the outpouring
of love the Tuvan people shower upon him. "Back home, I'm
the alien," Pena says at one point. In Tuva, with his guide
and best friend, Ondar, Pena is treated like a star. (He
is nicknamed "the Earthquake" for his deep
throttle sound.) Constantly being touched, smiled at and
generally embraced by a culture so warm it seems almost
unreal, the sensitive Pena is often moved to a heart-wrenching
bliss that is noticeable in his jerky body movements, eager
face and humble disposition. It is a touching spectacle
that Pena himself can never behold visually--only aurally
and inwardly. This reaches the spirit of the film, which
is more about Pena's simultaneous connection with and unbridgeable
separateness from his newfound land and friends. The amateur
filmmakers manage to capture Pena's view and the harmony
within the discord of what he cannot see.
Working against the annoying "World Music" trend, in which
mostly white, middle-class, liberal types pride themselves
on being multicultural just because they take an alien form
of music seriously, Genghis Blues helps the viewer
appreciate the throaty harmonies of the culture while maintaining
a sense of humor. Humor is key to the Tuvans, who laugh
with joy and appreciation. By the end of the film, you are
absolutely taken with Pena's newfound creation: bluesy throat
singing combining two musical styles that complement each
other beautifully in Pena's sometimes on-the-spot compositions.
What is most important about Genghis Blues is that
while it documents such a lovely thing, it thankfully does
not glamorize it (though the filmmakers have a tendency
to be cutesy). The movie shows that revelations cannot be
had by just anyone; not everyone can just go east and be
spiritually awakened. It takes a special person like Pena,
who has truly walked through darkness, to "get" what an
epiphany means. Oftentimes, his experiences are equally
horrifying and beatific.
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Willamette Week | originally
published September 8,
1999
|
