http://rasml.org/?p=851

My brother and sister-in-law recommended this to me and I really enjoyed it. As a documentary it was rough around the edges—and the fellas making it admit that it’s their first movie and when the opportunity came to travel to Tuva they just dropped their day jobs and went for it. The story by itself it interesting, but it’s the wonderfully flawed Paul Pena that makes it a compelling film.

If they’d had a better film crew the Tuvan Throatsing performances could have been much more dramatic and musically affecting, but it’s scrappy and that’s mostly okay in this flick. I also liked the fact that the two biggest claims to fame in the documentary are a 20 second clip of B.B. King talking about Paul and the fact that Paul wrote a “Big Ol’ Jet Airliner” which was eventually covered by Steve Miller Band. The rest is just a story about a mostly forgotten blind blues musician making a trek to Tuva to meet the people who sing from their throats and compete in their annual throatsing competition.