Tim Johnson and Stevie Salas are the executive producers of RUMBLE, a documentary about influential Native American musicians. Salas is a music industry veteran, winning a lifetime achievement award from the Native American Music Awards in 2009. Johnson was the Associate Director of Museum Programs at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian. The film is inspired by an exhibit they collaborated on, which has become the museum’s most successful exhibit.
In an interview, Johnson and Salas spoke about the genesis of the film. Johnson notes, “Overseeing exhibits for the National Museum of the American Indian, we looked at numerous professions to see if we could do exhibitions around them […] When we threw our research, investigation, and inquiry into looking at musicians, it was different. Here are people who introduced new elements to jazz, blues, rock, folk, hip-hop, and it all started to unfold and became quite substantive.”
Salas recalls the process for getting the film made, “I think because we had the power of the Smithsonian on our side, I think that gave us the confidence to really get into great detail about what we wanted to do with the film. When I was pitching the idea I was just throwing out all of these ideas right off the top of my head because we had spent so much time working on this material already. We knew that this history would shake people up, and gauging by the reactions that we have gotten from the Smithsonian and from audiences that have seen it, we can see that it’s doing just that.”
