WHY OLD TIME

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The Henry Reed Legacy

From the early part of the last century to his death in 1968, Giles County, Virginia, fixture Henry Reed was quietly going about a life built around family, tradition and Old Time music. Henry was instrumental in the revival of interest in this musical form, becoming the subject of serious academic study by scholar, Dr. Alan Jabbour.

Henry's role in music is significant, both preserving old tunes and inventing new ones, and today, many standard songs in the Old Time circuit are known simply as "Henry Reed tunes." To quote Dr. Jabbour, who archived Henry's work for the Folk Song Archive of the Library of Congress:

Dean, "T-Baby" Reed, son of Henry Reed preserves his father's legacy in song at a local house concert in March, 2008.

"He was a kind of musical encyclopedia of his region and era, and virtually every musical influence that lingered from yore or wafted by from the world about him seems to have been imprinted in his imagination. To scan his repertory is to abandon forever both the notion that the Appalachian region was culturally isolated a hundred years ago, and the notion that ancient traditions are best preserved when there is no contact with the new. His tunes reveal splendidly both the depth and grandeur of the older fiddling tradition of the nineteenth-century frontier, and the richly textured fabric of continuing musical creativity in the region throughout the first half of the twentieth century." (From the Library of Congress website.)

Alan Jabbour plays a sample of Henry's trademark songs for our cameras before the Henry Reed Festival, 2006.

For this film, we have spoken with several members of the Reed family and Alan Jabbour as well as numerous musicians who gather to learn and play his works at the Henry Reed Festival each year. Our film is a study of the impact one man can have merely by living his life honestly. Henry was a man who fed his family from his land, stood up to a giant corporation and had an open door to anyone who wanted to pick up a new song, night or day.
The Henry Reed Legacy should be available for purchase on DVD in late Summer of 2008. For more information, check this site often as it will be an official release point.

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