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Review: Fans of the movie "Buena Vista Social Club" will probably dig "Genghis Blues," another documentary about music's ability to bridge different cultures.

In Roko Belic's film, the emissary from America is Paul Pena, a blind Creole bluesman who has played with T-Bone Walker, B.B. King, Bonnie Raitt and others, who finds himself in the obscure Central Asian region of Tuva.

That's because of something strange that Pena hears one night on the radio: what sounds like several voices emerging from one singer's throat. Aptly enough, the technique is called throatsinging. The result is a bizarre, guttural thrumming sound, as if the human body had been turned into a giant jew's-harp.

Learning the technique at home in San Francisco over the course of 11 years, Pena eventually travels to Tuva (between Siberia and Mongolia), where he charms the natives and wins their admiration for his singing. That's pretty much the movie, which switches between snippets of Pena encountering Tuvan musicians and singing before appreciative audiences. The movie is so laid back that it's hard not to get excited when the musician starts to freak out because he's almost out of medicine and a member of the U.S. entourage has a heart attack.

Not to worry. These doses of trouble are soon resolved: The drum-dwelling evil spirit believed to be responsible for the mishaps is taken care of by a shaman. Then the film continues to meander along in its carefree fashion.

— Steve Murray, Cox News Service