Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked the World (2017)

(On Cable TV, September 2021) I’m only too happy to learn more about underappreciated contributions to pop culture, and Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked the World draws an interesting and hitherto undocumented portrait of Native American contribution to rock music. As the title suggests, much of the film’s early moments are built around Link Wray’s power chords on “Rumble” (reportedly the only instrumental ever banned in New York and Boston). It’s a great hook, and much of the documentary consists in examining rock musicians of Native American ethnicity (including Jimi Hendrix and, stretching the definition of rock a bit, the essential Buffy Sainte-Marie), their lives and influence. There’s good music throughout, and the succession of talking heads with historical footage certainly gets the point across. I’m sure that commentators with deeper musical knowledge than mine will find nitpicks and omissions, but Rumble feels reasonably comprehensive, and it is perhaps destined to become a Volume One of further documentaries exploring Native American influence on music. [November 2023: Oof — Like nearly everything related to Buffy Sainte-Marie, Rumble has lost a few feathers following revelations of Saint-Marie having misled people about what turns out to be her non-First Nation ethnicity.]