Just Outside of Outer Mongolia: Paul Pena and Tuvan Throat Singing

I’m not one to repeat watching a documentary but, though the filmmaking process was kinda shoddy and unprofessional, Genghis Blues is right up my alley and for the second time in two viewings it brought me to tears.

 

The poster for Genghis Blues

The premise of Genghis Blues is the journey of blues man Paul Pena to Tannu Tuva after he learns the techniques of Tuvan throat singing, hearing it come in on a Moscow radio station on his shortwave radio but, like any great story, goes a lot deeper than that and hits me at an intersection of a number of my interests.

Firstly, the documentary strikes at probably one of my hugest passions: Music. Paul Pena was an underappreciated San Francisco bluesman who played with T-Bone Walker’s band and opened for the Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia Band, and is probably most famous for writing “Jet Airliner,” made popular by the Steve Miller Band. He only really made 2 albums, the most famous being New Train, which has an upbeat barbecue rock sound perfect for happy picnics. Pena, though, could play a sophisticated blues infused with the knowledge of Jazz scales, and it’s tweaked a little bit. Just how I like it.

What blew me away about the story told in the documentary is Pena’s enormous effort and passion put into learning not only Tuvan throat singing but learning the Tuvan language. If you’ve never heard of Tannu Tuva, it’s just outside of Outer Mongolia and was only a recognized country between 1921 and 1944, after which it was swallowed by the Soviet Union, and is now part of the Russian Federation. Like any country engulfed by an empire, its language, culture and traditions are threatened by extinction, a fact made starker by the Tuvans’ nomadic tendencies, which make it difficult to exist in our current world.

Tuvan throatsinging utilizes the art of hitting up to 3 notes at a single time in complicated overtones and strange pitches and harmonies, unrecognizable by the western musical language. Sonically, hearing the singing is like visiting another dimension. At one of the last Grateful Dead shows I went to, I was able to hear the Gyuto Order of Tibetan monks chant with their overtone chordal chant style of singing. And though it wouldn’t be something I’d want to listen to for more than a half hour, hearing otherworldly voices with 25,000 people was an extremely powerful experience. The Tuvan throat singing is also powerful but, in many cases, it’s just one singer who is making these strange sounds and the tones that the Tuvans can achieve are even much wilder.

Secondly, the movie hit me at my second biggest passion: Travel. Paul Pena is the perfect traveler. Pena is such a huge bear of a man and emanates an enormous warmth and kindness. Paul’s character is one that the Tuvans immediately gravitate toward because of his generous spirit. Pena is completely blind and has to be led around through the strange country by a wonderfully friendly and adventurous Tuvan guide, and you can see the strong bond that develops between the two in their travels. It must be so wild and difficult to travel through such a strange country in a world in which people get 95% of the information about their surroundings through their eyes.

 

Pena and Kongar-ol Ondar on a river, the subject most common to Tuvan throat singing songs

Tuva is about as strange as it comes in the world of travel. At a topical glance, the wild steppes don’t look too much different than Montana, but clearly we are in another world when we hear the strange languages and see the customs of the nomadic Tuvan people, who are made up of Uyghurs, Turks, Huns and other ethnics groups. It’s another time’s forgotten space, and produces a feeling I experience when I ponder the central steppes of Asia. If you’ve ever read Haruki Murakami’s The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, you know what I’m writing about. There is just something so otherworldly that it becomes almost like another planet. One imagines a world from a science fiction film the 1950s, but just a bit more weird.

Pena’s humility is such that people know that he is genuinely blown away that the Tuvans find him to be such an excellent throat singer, and it’s amazing that he has such deep appreciation for this random far flung place. The Tuvans respect his genuine passion for the music and the place because he genuinely respects them. This mutual respect is real and powerful.

 

The friendship develops between Pena and Kongar-ol Ondar, master Tuvan throat singer

Pena is versatile as a musician—his great ears are what allow him to learn both the Tuvan language and the strange singing style. I’m no expert in Tuvan throat singing, but it’s clear that Pena gets all of the little nuances that make it unique, and that is why he wins the throat singing contest. There’s something about his spontaneous demeanor, one that is so essential for a musician who works in improvisatory music styles, and this spontaneity also makes him a great traveler. He doesn’t break stride when his guitar string breaks on stage and he is handed a traditional Tuvan instrument that he plays as if he was born with it in his hands.

Pena’s generous spirit of adventure gave me deep homesickness for the San Francisco Bay Area, where people are so open to new experiences and different kinds of people.