Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked the World

I saw this film at the Sonoma film fest. There were probably 200 people in the audience and all sat in rapt attention. No one walked out and there was mad applause at the end. A beautiful music and Native American feel good story masterfully told.

RUMBLE: THE INDIANS WHO ROCKED THE WORLD (2018) - Catherine Bainbridge and Alfonso Maiorana's interesting Documentary got a brief theatrical release last year, and is now streaming via iTunes, Youtube etc.. Taking it's title from Native American guitarist Link Wray's pounding tune, RUMBLE attempts to show the link from Native American music (particularly its ryhymic aspects) to much of contemporary music. It succeeds to a large degree as it traces how Native Americans and African Americans were often discriminated against and thrust together by larger society (and inter-married). Native American musicians combined with black performers to create the mix of blues and folk to create rock 'n roll. Some of the connections seem more tenuous than others, but, the history is well told. Interview subjects ranging from Taj Mahal to Buffy St. Marie to Robbie Robertson to Tommy Ramone give insight (Marie and Robertson are of Native American descent). The Doc loses a bit of its focus as it enters the more modern era, but RUMBLE is a solid introduction to this aspect of rock's tangled roots.

This starts with a full on Link Wray appreciation overload as we learn he was half native Indian. It's interesting, but doesn't really feel like sure footing for a feature length documentary. This format continues with Charlie Patton, Hendrix, but it improves with a deep look at white Americas treatment of native Americans and the oppression of their culture... and their music. Utilising some really nice archival footage, it's a story of diversification of people and cultures, the rhythms those people brought with them, the birth of new sounds from those origins and how those sounds came to influence the music we recognise today.

Rumble is an important documentary, foundational to any survey of Native American musics, but it runs out of time before getting to the contributions and influence of Jim Pepper (Kaw/Muskogee Creek) and Don Cherry (Choctaw/African American), both pioneers in the development of experimental jazz and "world" music. Both created important and original bodies of work.

Extremely interesting in many many ways, beyond music history.

It touches many aspects of American history and society and the important contributions of the original Americans, which most of us us have heard without knowing.

Could have been more polished technically, but the material is invaluable. I could not stop watching, and being surprised, till the end.