A song to remember

>> Two cultures meet up in Genghis Blues

by MATTHEW HAYS

It's a pretty distinctive sound, a growling, other-wordly, gritting moan, suggesting the noise a cow in heat might make. When one character in Genghis Blues describes it, he says it's like "Popeye singing the blues."

It's an extremely rare form of multi-harmonic throat-singing, and it emanates from the small isolated Republic of Tuva, which is nestled between Siberia and Mongolia. When brothers Roko and Adrian Belic first heard of the republic and its people, they were fascinated. Then only in high school, the two had no idea that years later, after completing their university degrees, they would end up heading to Tuva and making the definitive documentary on its homegrown throat-singing culture.

Their hook for the film came with blind musician Paul Pena, who's worked with the likes of T-Bone Walker, B.B. King and the Steve Miller Band (Pena wrote the hit song "Jet Airliner.") Pena had heard the throat-singing years earlier on short-wave radio and became obsessed with learning more about it, even learning to perform the unusual singing himself.

Speaking from his California home, filmmaker Roko Belic says when he met Pena, he knew he and his brother, and filmmaking partner Adrian, had their movie. "Paul's just such an incredible person," says Roko. "He's got so many amazing stories to tell. As he tells stories, he pulls out all sorts of instruments and plays them as he talks. He speaks eight different languages. I knew that his life with the visit to Tuva would make for a perfect combination."

The film follows Pena as he and the crew head off to Tuva for a throat-singing competition. Pena is the first American ever to enter, and he manages to sing, even to improvise a song, on stage with incredible finesse, much to the delight of the Tuvanese people.

Genghis Blues evolves into a gorgeous symphony, a simply shot but eloquent ode to this truly gifted musician (Pena) and this culture which welcomes him as one of their own. The Brothers Belic worked to keep their filmmaking style simple, leaving the film up to its subjects, and the choice pays off nicely. "I didn't want to impose my filmmaking style on the story," says Roko. "It stood on its own."

The filmmaking/singing journey, done on a shoestring, was fraught with problems, however. At one juncture, Pena begins to run out of his medication while another crew member falls seriously ill. Roko reports that some of the nastiness didn't even make it into the final cut (one crew member was told he might have to have a limb amputated). "At this point, it felt totally out of control," Roko recalls. "But once I realized no one was dead, there was actually something rather exhilarating about it." :

Genghis Blues opens Friday, January 21 at the Cinema du Parc. See repertory listings for showtimes