If you believe that music is a universal language, please don't miss Genghis Blues, a scrappy, seat-of-the-pants documentary that follows a blind bluesman on a journey to the lost land of Tuva.

 Where?

 Let's begin at the beginning. Paul Pena, a celebrated San Francisco blues artist, was listening to his shortwave radio some 15 years ago when he heard some bizarre singing in a Radio Moscow broadcast. What Pena heard was throat singing, a vocalization peculiar to the people of Tuva, a tiny republic wedged between Mongolia and Siberia.

 Throat singing is difficult to describe, but it involves using the human voice to make more than one sound at once. Pena felt it sounded just like, "Popeye singing the blues."

 The artist began teaching himself Tuvan throat singing. He learned a bit of the Tuvan language. Then he had the chance to meet (and sing with) Kongar-ol Ondar, a famed throat singer who was visiting San Francisco.

 After one thing led to another, Pena found himself on his way to Tuva to take part in the country's throat singing contest. What Genghis Blues goes on to show in the way of cultural understanding and possibility could make a viewer go all misty. The film is like a trip into a forgotten time and place, but it's interesting how quickly the so-called differences between the Westerners and the Tuvans disappear.

 Part history lesson, part travelogue, part musical journey and part humanitarian undertaking, Genghis Blues is a film from brothers Roko and Adrian Belic. It's their first film, in fact, and it has already won a dozen filmfest awards.

 Small wonder. The film covers enormous human territory, and it's everything from Paul Pena speaking openly about his blindness and clinical depression to the Western visitors attending a sheep-slaughtering ceremony. Genghis Blues is quick, smart, often funny and very touching, particularly the scenes when Pena competes in the throat singing contest or when he sings in public places in Tuva and a crowd gathers.

 Filmmakers Roko and Adrian Belic -- a couple of just barely thirtysomething brothers -- were raised in a household where their mother 'fixed' the television with a wrench to ensure that the only available channel was PBS.

 Looks as if mom's strategy paid off.

 Genghis Blues is in English and Tuvan with subtitles.

(This film is rated PG)

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