Genghis Blues

San Francisco bluesman and composer Paul Peña attends the 1995 throatsinging symposium in Tuva, located in central Asia. Helped by the "Friends of Tuva,", blind and recently widowed Peña makes a musical pilgrimage to a land where nomadic people throatsing more than one note simultaneously, using vocal harmonics. Singing in the deep, rumbling kargyraa style, Peña gives inspired performances at the festival, composes songs in Tuvan, washes his face in sacred rivers, expresses the disorientation of blindness in foreign surroundings, and makes a human connection with everyone he meets.