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:
"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.)
Dean, "T-Baby" Reed, son of Henry Reed preserves his father's legacy in song
at a local house concert in March, 2008.
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.
Available now
$20.00
Alan Jabbour plays a sample of Henry's trademark songs for our cameras
before the Henry Reed Festival, 2006.
