Genghis Blues

Truth is invariably stranger than fiction. Few would believe a Hollywood movie where a blind American bluesman teaches himself the esoteric Tuvan art of throat singing, then goes to that Central Asian republic and wins a throat singing contest. But in the documentary Genghis Blues,just issued on video and DVD, that's exactly what happens to Paul Pena, who carried off victory in two categories.

"I was stunned when I won, and that's an understatement" Pena laughed. He'd competed in kagygraa, one of six styles of throat-singing, but was also voted audience favorite "a category they made up that night," after being called back for several encores, and speaking to the crowd in their native language.

The 50 year-old singer, who was born blind, had apprenticed with John Lee Hooker, T-Bone Walker, and others before performing in San Francisco for many years, and had written "Jet Airliner," a 1977 hit for rocker Steve Miller.

"It's like that guy was in a movie and I watched him."

But on December 29, 1984, his musical world turned around. Receiving a strong Radio Moscow signal on his shortwave radio, he heard throat singing for the first time, and "I thought my radio had busted at first."

For the next seven years, Pena tried unsuccessfully to hunt down information on the "Tuvash" people, as the announcer had called them. It wasn't until 1991 that he finally came across a CD of throat singing, and "for the next three or four months I played it almost 24 hours a day, and tried all sorts of funny noises."

Eventually, by a mix of luck and persistence, he learned the technique where "you constrict one part of the throat, and push hard into another. In that space the sound changes."

Once he understood that, he was able to master the different styles, concentrating on the bass-heavy overtones of kargyraa, with its similarity to gutbucket blues vocals, as he demonstrated on "Kargyraa Moan".

But it wasn't until he met Tuvan singer Kongar-Ol Ondar at a 1993 San Francisco performance that he really throat sang publicly. "Kongar-Ol came out, we got close and I opened up with this popular Tuvan song," Pena recalled They hadn't done it in their program, so I had to have learned it elsewhere. He just freaked." The two of them "just took to each other."

Later that year, Pena met Ralph Leighton, who'd founded the Friends of Tuva Society with the late Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman, who paid for the throat singing bluesman to attend the triennial symposium and competition of throat singing in Kyzyl, Tuva, in 1995, because "he has this spirit of adventure, not taking things for granted."

Six people traveled to Tuva, including film makers Roco and Adrian Belic, who documented not only Pena's triumph at the competition, but the travels around the land with Ondar, which inspired Pena's moving "Center Of Asia", a love song for the country and the trip. The resulting film was nominated for an Academy Award and won awards at Sundance and the San Francisco International Film Festival.

The half-decade since Tuva haven't been kind of Pena, however.

"Within a year of his return a lot of things happened," said Leighton. "He got smoke inhalation from a fire in his apartment and was in the hospital. Then he lost weight. Finally we persuaded him to see a doctor, then he was wrongly diagnosed with pancreatic cancer."

Even though he's lost 100 pounds, and has round-the-clock care, Pena still performs, and just played a gig to celebrate the release of Genghis Blues, as well as the reissue of his 1973 record Night Train, and also a new blues disc, Giant Killers. But the unique experience of being a throat-singing American in Tuva stays with him forever.

"It's still such a surprise when I think about it," observed Pena. "It's like that guy was in a movie and I watched him. I'd love to go back sometime."

This article first appeared on sonicnet.com

Genghis Blues

"It's like that guy was in a movie and I watched him."

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