The Story of the Weeping Camel / Genghis Blues

..And now for something completely different...

If you dig documentaries that transport you to somewhere totally foreign and unknown, and allow you to temporarily embody a life or lives you would never otherwise, I recommend both of these whole-heartedly.

The first is about a Mongolian family of camel herders who step in when a mother camel abandons her albino calf. Great cinematography, good sound, and the ending is unbelievable.

The second documents blind American blues singer Paul Pena's trip to Tuva after teaching himself throat singing by tuning in to Russian broadcasts via ham radio. If you're unfamiliar, to quote Scientific American, throat singing is "a remarkable singing technique in which a single vocalist produces two distinct tones simultaneously. One tone is a low, sustained fundamental pitch, similar to the drone of a bagpipe. The second is a series of flutelike harmonics, which resonate high above the drone and may be musically stylized to represent such sounds as the whistle of a bird, the syncopated rhythms of a mountain stream or the lilt of a cantering horse." Been a couple years since I've seen this one, but I bet it would be great to hear on the Ascends...