READY TO RUMBLE
Rumble feels like a pair of documentaries stitched together. The first tells the story of how Indigenous peoples influenced the development of rock ’n’ roll. Foremost in this category is Link Wray, a Shawnee who died in 2005 and whose 1958 hit Rumble gives the film its name.
A hugely influential guitarist, Wray influenced such acts as Iggy Pop and the Ramones. Pete Townshend said the man basically invented the power chord.
Co-directors Catherine Bainbridge (Reel Injun) and Alfonso Maiorana even make a case that Indigenous music helped give birth to rock. And before you point out that African-Americans had a huge role as well, the directors note that many blacks and Indigenous peoples actually have shared ancestry, thanks early Americans’ habit of enslaving anyone who wasn’t white.
Indigenous pride gives us the second half of Rumble, in which various Indigenous (or part Indigenous) musicians discuss their culture and music. Toronto-born Mohawk Robbie Robertson of The Band talks about learning about music from his cousins on the Six Nations Reserve, and recalls being told: “Be proud you’re an Indian, but be careful who you tell.” And we hear from Redbone, a ’70s Indigenous American rock group who “did the Indian thing” on stage and whose single Come and Get Your Love received renewed attention when it kicked off 2014’s Guardians of the Galaxy.
The links to Indigenous ancestry sometimes get a little thin. Jimi Hendrix is in the film because his paternal grandmother was one-quarter Cherokee, while blues legend Charley Patton, who died in 1934, “may have been Choctaw.” Closer to the source is jazz singer Mildred Bailey, who grew up on the Coeur d’Alene reservation in Idaho, and was a huge influence on a young Tony Bennett. Here we’re out of the realm of rock, but firmly in that of Indigenous peoples’ contributions to musical history — which, any way you slice it, is vast.