January 2017 Professor of Folklore to Deliver Third Annual Jean Ritchie Memorial Lecture

Henry Glassie, Professor of Folklore at Indiana University will give the Third Annual Jean Ritchie Memorial Lecture on ‘The Southern Mountain Music of Ola Belle Reed (1916-2002)’. The lecture will take place on Thursday, 2 February from 1-2pm in The Cube, Áras na Mac Léinn.

Bella Reed was an American folk singer, songwriter and banjo player whose work engaged with Appalachian life and traditions. She was one of the greatest ever performers of Appalachian music.

Professor Glassie has co-authored of Ola Belle Reed and Southern Mountain Music on the Mason-Dixon Line, which includes rare recordings of Reed’s music. In 1966, Professor Glassie first heard her play in the town of Oxford, Pennsylvania, where Alex and Ola Belle Reed and the New River Boys and Girls performed Southern mountain music live, on the air, in the back of the Campbell’s Corner general store.

Over the next two years, he recorded her repertoire of folk ballads, minstrel songs, country standards, and originals. He also chronicled the remarkable story of the migration of communities from the Blue Ridge Mountains toward the Mason-Dixon Line prior to WWII.

Professor Glassie’s work has received many awards, including the Chicago Folklore Prize. In 2010, he was given the ‘American Folklore Society’s Award for a Lifetime of Scholarly Achievement’, and the prestigious ‘Charles Homer Haskins Prize of the American Council of Learned Societies’ in 2011.

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