Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked The World

Ethno-musicology probably wouldn't be most people's idea of a riveting subject, but thanks to its beautifully creative storytelling, genuinely revelatory insights and a list of interviewees that reads like a who's who of rock royalty — including Slash, Steven Tyler, Quincy Jones, and oddly, Martin Scorsese — Catherine Bainbridge's Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked The World is a slick, sleek, and satisfying ride through the history of North American music.

The film is both an investigation and a celebration of the artists and influencers of Native American descent, whose role in the development of pop music is as far reaching as it is underrepresented. From obscure luminaries of speakeasy jazz clubs, hugely important in their day but now sadly neglected, to the greatest of the greats, such as Jimi Hendrix - who was part Cherokee by the way - this documentary finds uncanny connections to ancient musical traditions hiding in plain sight.

Some of the connections are touchingly intimate. The title of the film, for example, is drawn from the 1958 hit instrumental by Link Wray, the Shawnee guitar legend with an Elvis-inspired sense of style. A stunningly diverse range of megastars, from Iggy Pop to Pete Townshend to E Street Band guitarist Steven Van Zandt, line up to share how powerful this one song was on their musical lives. In Iggy's words: "It gave me the confidence to say, 'Fuck it. I'm going to be a musician.'"

Wray's personally customised amps, tailored to create ear-shredding distortions, and his use of what would be described today as power chords, pioneered a sound world that would become the cornerstone of rock music. And yet Wray's harmonic language is lifted wholesale from the tribal songs from his Native American heritage.

One of the most striking and affecting synergies can be found in the music of the Blues. Its roots as an evolution of African slave music, saturated in an outpouring of grief and subjugation under the lash of the white man, draws a direct link to the same psychological roots as its Native American cousin. When heard side by side, the music of Delta Blues icon Charley Patton - a Native American on his mother's side - and the traditional songs from his ancestry are almost indistinguishable.