Genghis Blues

USA, 1999, 88mins
Dir./Scr./Ed. Roko Belic
Music by Paul Pena, Kongar-ol Ondar
Screened at the 46th Sydney Film Festival
Won the Audience Award for Documentary at Sundance

I know this is a strange piece of writing, but it means a lot to me, so don't fuck around with it. it deserves (as a film, not a review) to be placed high up (higher than it currently is) on your festival ranking scale. in my opinion the best film of the festival

I've already tried describing the greatness of this documentary to friends and family, and every time I get the same blank faced reaction. I always end with "I know it sounds stupid, but it really works when you see it". Perhaps that is my job here, to reach at what cannot be obtained. You are here to witness a mere attempt at reviewing. It's dangerous skimming around the edges of an experience, writing in terms of sheer effect... it can descend into banal hyperbole at the drop of a cliché: Brilliant, Moving, Best Film of the Festival. Yet it is all these things.

Genghis Blues is a triumph of subject. It was shot on cheap video stock, and it follows a quite standard narrative line. In aesthetic terms it is nothing to write home about. It is rather a film about tradition itself, about roots and the nature of friendship, about blues music and Black America, about travel and the democracy of music. Some of that might sound quite cliched and sentimental. Far from it. Yet to describe the story would probably just add to this assumption. Instead of writing up the whole film just so one person I know can read it and try and understand what I was talking about all last week, I?ll try and describe the essence of one scene, a small moment that plays under the credits, and thread the assorted points back through it:

Paul Pena is sitting in a small studio, surrounded by dust and lots of seemingly ancient equipment. He is blind, and has an enormous head of hair that is perpetually messy. He takes his guitar and without an introduction starts banging away at an old blues tune, "You Gotta Move", written by Fred McDowell and Reverend Gary Davis. The Rolling Stones covered this song on their 1971 album Sticky Fingers. It's track five, and it would be the last track of side one if the album were still being pressed on vinyl today. The song was a shock the first time I heard it. It didn't seem to belong, and it still doesn't today. It comes right after Can't You Hear Me Knocking, perhaps the most infectious and dangerous song on the album. Within the seven minutes of that track everything happens. It could go on forever and you wouldn't care. Charlie Watt's cymbal crash fades away slowly. When the next song arrives, it could be almost be Robert Johnson making a cameo appearance, except this song begins too slowly. It has too much time, and Jagger's voice contains it all.

Keith Richards slows the song down and emphasises every slide of his guitar. There is almost too much space in the song, and Jagger works every syllable before moving on. There is a pain in the music, a choice to begin with nothing and try and build from there. Richards possesses the blues, stretches it out, sets off explosions, gives the song a second to scatter, and brings it back together. The blues plod along, a chord slashing across the quiet every fourth beat. The words are simple:

Oh When the Lord
Is ready
You Gotta Move
You maybe high
You may be low
You maybe rich
Or maybe poor
But when the Lord
Get Ready
You Gotta Move

Maybe when Jagger sang those lines the thought that one day he could be the low and poor crossed his mind. It's the ultimate performance, because the song is utterly convincing while you hear it yet falls apart afterwards. Jagger isn't singing the blues, he's singing of them, and there is a big difference. Perhaps he knew this, and maybe that's why there is another song penned by him and Richards called "I Got The Blues". That is the genuine article, and the music moves with utter conviction:

In the slipsheet of time
I will find peace of mind
Love is a bed for the blues
And I got the blues for you

Like most blues lyrics, they sound contrived when removed from the music. Jagger sees this, and he goes further, showing us that he really is a man possessed. The last line of the song proves his faith:

If you don't believe what I'm singing
At 3 o'clock in the morning, babe
Well I'm singing my song for you

That is the final retreat to music, the song as the last means of truth. "Do my words alone convince you babe? I'm singing my song for you!" If you want it, here it is. The song is there, and Jagger knows it's enough. Greil Marcus writes:

The singer goes as far as he or she can go; the singer even acknowledges the quandary, gives in to its tension, abandons words and screams. But the singer still comes up short; the performance demands the absolute lucidity it has already promised, a promise from which it is already falling back, and so an instrument takes over. It is a relief: a relief from the failure of language. The thrill is that of entering a world where anything can be said, even if no one can know what it means.

Jagger has that fear. As long as he's in the song, captured in the plea, he's safe. But there are other moments when shelter is tougher to find. Sticky Fingers ends with "Moonlight Mile", and Jagger the vocalist sees only the distance still to be traveled. Jagger ends the song with a wordless vocal shudder, a step backwards. Yet as the guitarist he never feels that fear. If Jagger's vocal ends with him still walking, his music ends with him slashing at chords, barking across the composition as the string section follows his lead, jabbing for meaning, for deliverance. It's significant that Richards doesn't play on this track; it's the only track that he isn't involved with on the album. This is Jagger's last throw, his last chance to make it all connect. All the while "You Gotta Move" continues, always building, yet now Pena has come back, and the song is his again. He too drives for completion, for the wider picture. Both play for vision; the song is an attempt at clarity. Just another moonlight mile. Pena's version is ramshackle, on the spot and fast. Pena gives the meaning of the song to you, without a second thought; he makes you understand what it means to have to move, a rootlessness born out of necessity. There is little space in his performance. The acoustic guitar works busily, and eventually the screen fades to black.

Jagger played guitar, but Richards was always necessary. "Moonlight Mile" was the one-off. Eventually they are still are group. Pena can only rely on himself, and he was born blind. When Jagger sings "You Gotta Move", it's a plea to Richards, a notice that if they keep playing, they are alive within the song. The song builds...you gotta move, you gotta move. That in turn is the sound of Exile on Main Street, the philosophy laid down in the opening track Rocks Off:

Heading for an overload
Spat out on the dusty floor
Kick me like you kicked before
I can't even feel the pain no more

If we continue...kick me like you kicked before. But is this an essay about early 70s Rolling Stones? What the hell am I getting at? I'm still reaching. When Paul Pena played "You Gotta Move", this was what hit me. The Stones resurrected many half-forgotten bluesmen. They raised awareness of America's musical heritage. Pena in turn rediscovers the least known track on Sticky Fingers, the song that always rolled through my head uneasily. From the liner notes to Exile on Main Street: GAVE YOU THE DIAMONDS. YOU GAVE ME THE DISEASE. All of this forms a line, but that line is never straight. We gather for the performance, try to discuss it feebly and then head home to play it back in our heads. For the duration of the song, protection is possible:

If I don't get some shelter I'm gonna fade away.

Adam Rivett
comments? email the author

return to Sydney Film Festival 1999 index
read a different review of Genghis Blues by natalia laban
visit the Official Genghis Blues website