‘Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked the World’: The Unknown Story of Native American Roots in American Music
This an amazing feature documentary which reveals so much in the way of our American cultural history that it’s almost difficult to sum up.
American society and the settlement and development of the nation’s land was built on two great evils against humanity.
First was the enslavement for their labor and resulting early deaths and murders of tens of millions of Africans.
The second was the slaughter of millions of indigenous peoples and the simultaneous and subsequent land robbing by European new comers. These peoples had inhabited and still do inhabit the U.S. continent long before any Europeans arrived.
Often the survivors of these massacres tried to blend into society and hide their ethnic roots. Often the children were abducted from their family and taken to far away institutions and denied any knowledge of their origins and cultures.
But many of them carried their memories and often — as this film demonstrates —they carried their cultural heritage as well and they have introduced it in multiple, surprising and effective ways into our current popular culture.
The influence of black artists on popular culture — musical and otherwise — is obvious and well known.
But, for us at least, this is a first time exposure to the broad and previously hidden and unknown influence of Native American descendants in the formation and artistry of American popular music aka Rock ‘n Roll.
And not only did the American Natives influence music, from blue grass to electric guitar, as someone in the film says — so many major musicians in this film, from Taj Mahal to Steven Tyler of Aerosmith — every black person seems to claim a great or great-great grandmother who was Indian. Who else would these millions of black male slaves have children with, considering they were in the majority of black slaves brought here and in the 1890s mixed indigenous (African and American) parentage was perhaps the norm.
The rocking documentary Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked the World at long last reveals the untold story of a profound, essential, and, until now, missing chapter in the history of rock n’ roll: the Indigenous Influence.
Investigating the influential careers of such Native American performers as “Queen of Swing” Mildred Bailey, Delta bluesman Charley Patton, Jimi Hendrix, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Redbone, Robbie Robertson, our hearing becomes attuned to a new sound, one we have been hearing all along but never have identified before..
Then there’s Link Wray, whose iconic counter-culture anthem from 1958 lends the film its title — and, for what it’s worth, is still the only instrumental song to ever be banned from the radio.
Rumble shows how these talented Native musicians helped shape the soundtracks of our lives.
Inspired by the Smithsonian Institution exhibit “Up Where We Belong: Native Musicians In Popular Culture,” created by Tim Johnson and Stevie Salas for the National Museum of the American Indian, the film features electrifying performance footage and engaging testimony from a long list of music artists, historians, and experts, including Steven Van Zandt, Iggy Pop, Tony Bennett, Taj Mahal, Martin Scorsese, John Trudell, Steven Tyler, George Clinton, Stevie Salas, Slash and many more.
An eye-opening look at a little known but vitally important component of American popular music, Rumble is an astonishing documentary that shines a spotlight on generations of phenomenal artists for whom recognition is long overdue.
Their influence on the total development of modern popular music is basic and complete.
Directed by Catherine Bainbridge & Alfonso Maiorana, 2017, Canada, 103 minutes
Other Festival Appearances: Sundance; Hot Docs; New Zealand, Edinburgh and The Loft Film Festival 2017.
Winner: Special Jury Prize (World Cinema Documentary), Sundance Film Festival; Rogers Audience Award for Best Canadian Documentary, Hot Docs.
Shortlisted for Academy Award Consideration for Best Documentary.
