Back Tuva Future
See Genghis Blues .
Blind San Francisco Bluesman Paul Peña
(he wrote "Big Old Jet Airliner") becomes fascinated by the other-worldly sound of Tuvan throat singing.
He teaches himself Russian by Braille, so that he could learn Tuvan, so that he could perform some of the Tuvan songs. Travels to Tuva to compete in their annual throat-singing contest. Richard Feynman shows up somewhere in this documentary.
Paul's Tuvan host, Ondar, has a CD
called Back Tuva Future, showing that even way outer Outer Mongolia isn't all that out of touch these days, and that some of the residents of some places like that can have a healthy sense of humor about it.
This has nothing to do with
Tuvalu, the Pacific island that is vanishing due to global warming.
Thanx to Random Walks
for inadvertently jogging my memory of this fine movie.
Here are a
couple
of
pointers
to Josh's letter-grade rating (D+) of Tuvalu's flag.
9:52:32 AM
Random radio Weblog