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| Photo: Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked the World Credit:PBS |
PBS has announced the next project Independent Lens: Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked the World special.
This documentary brings to light the overlooked influence of Indigenous people on popular music in North America. Focusing on music artists like Link Wray, Jimi Hendrix, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Taboo of The Black Eyed Peas, Charley Patton, Mildred Bailey, Jesse Ed Davis, Robbie Robertson, and Randy Castillo. RUMBLE: The Indians Who Rocked the World shows how these pioneering Native American musicians helped shape the soundtracks of our lives.
The idea for RUMBLE came about when guitarist Stevie Salas, an Apache Indian and one of the film’s Executive Producers, realized that no one outside of the music business knew about the profound contribution of these Native musicians. Renewed attention to this missing chapter in the history of American music led to the publishing of Brian Wright-McLeod’s The Encyclopedia of Native Music, an exhibit at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, and eventually this documentary.
Winner of a Special Jury Award for Masterful Storytelling at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival and the Audience Award and Best Canadian Documentary at Hot Docs, RUMBLE features interviews with musicians, historians, and experts including: Buddy Guy, Steven Van Zandt, Tony Bennett, Taj Mahal, Martin Scorsese, Stevie Salas, Quincy Jones, John Trudell, Steven Tyler, Alvin Youngblood Hart, Monk Boudreaux, George Clinton, Jackson Browne, Joy Harjo, Iggy Pop, Wayne Kramer (MC5), Marky Ramone (The Ramones), Pura Fe Crescioni (Ulali), Robert Trujillo (Metallica), Slash (Guns ‘N’ Roses), Rhiannon Giddens (Carolina Chocolate Drops), Pat Vegas (Redbone), Dan Auerbach (The Black Keys), and Taylor Hawkins (The Foo Fighters).
Salas was on hand at the PBS portion of The Television Critics Association to talk about the project along with Taboo from The Black Eyed Peas. Two subjects covered in the special is that fact that musicians Link Wray and Jimi Hendrix are Native American.
Salas states “I’m a guitar player, and I knew about Link Wray. I just never knew he was a Native American. And not only did I not know that, Jeff Beck told me stories about he would play air guitar when he was 17 years old with Jimmy Page, if you can imagine this, at Jeff Beck’s mom’s house jumping around playing air guitar to “Rumble.” And Jeff Beck is also a massive fan of Native American heritage. That’s why he always wears the chokers on stage all that. But he had no idea that Link was Native American. When I told him, he flipped. So, we all knew Link. We all thought
he was super cool, because he was kind of like the kind of punk rock. He’s the king of the power chord. He’s the king of heavy metal. He’s sort of the birth big bang of that.
But none of us knew he was Native American, and we were all pretty surprised. Most people have known him from “Pulp Fiction,” because that’s what really brought him back, when Tarantino put him in “Pulp Fiction.” So, people were amazed to find out he was Native American. And he ended up dying a few years ago. but he was still around touring right up until the end.
Jaime Luis Gomez known as Taboo added: “For me, watching the film, I was very kind of blown away that Jimi Hendrix was also native, because he had the flair and the persona that kind of spoke to me as a native myself, but when I found out that he was part native, it really inspired me to learn more about other natives in the music industry. That’s why I think seeing Link Wray as kind of like a person that he said you don’t tell people that you’re native or make sure be proud, but if you tell somebody, make sure that it’s the right person. It kind of taught me a lot about how history was where people weren’t actually proud to be where they came from or the person that they were. And now for the youth, I want to be able to let them have that same vision of standing up and being proud of themselves, and Link Wray set the tone for that with his you know, his perception, I think it allows us to stand up and be proud”.
After the panel, the audience was treated to a music presentation of Native American culture featuring Taboo, Brooke Simpson and PJ Vegas, son of Pat Vegas from the group Redbone. Redbone is a Native American rock group originating in the 1970s .
The documentary was the Winner of a Special Jury Award for Masterful Storytelling at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival and the Audience Award and Best Canadian Documentary at Hot Docs and will air on PBS in January.
