James Henry Neel Reed a master fiddler, banjoist, and harmonica player, he is the brother on the right of the header picture, had an amazing repertoire consisting of hundreds of tunes, as well as multiple performance styles all memorized by heart. He was professionally known as Henry Reed, and was born on April 28, 1884, in the Appalachian Mountains of Monroe County, West Virginia. As I do not have an exact location, I picked Zenith West Virginia as it is in the mountains and it has a propitious name: Henry Reed was the zenith of banjo playing.

His ascendant 09 Sagittarius 07 is ” in the pageant of progress , Puck, plays the role of opportunity” from the Sabian Symbols divined by Miss Elsie Wheeler. The accompanying text written by Dr. Marc Jones says it suggests when “man transforms his whole world for the glory of art.”

Mr Reed is a western lying bundle temperament type suggesting that he absorbed all around him and created music from all he heard. The library of Congress writes his music evolved ” in the Upper South and spread with westward migration, and the style’s syncopated patterns reveal an African-American influence that first appeared during the early 1800s.”

Syncopated patterns they note have influenced the shape of American music ever since—from the minstrel stage of the 1840s through ragtime, blues, jazz, country music, and rock-and-roll. “Georgia Camp Meeting,” for example, was intended originally for the “cake walk,” a popular dance of the ragtime era, and unlike European tunes, these highly American versions begin in a high pitch and cascade downward.

Read more about Henry Reed on Loc.Gov here. There is a lot of good music there too.

[tag A 10 Sagittarius, North Node in Libra, Preponderance in the sixth house, Western Bundle Temperament Type]