Syncopated Echoes

🌱 From Plantation Rags

Ragtime music developed organically long before its formal publication as sheet music.^[4] Scholars suggest its origins can be traced to dance events known as "rags," hosted by enslaved African Americans on plantations as early as the 1820s.^[4] These early musical ensembles typically featured banjo and fiddle players, with the distinctive syncopation that would become ragtime's hallmark often originating from the banjo's playing style.^[4]

🌍 Early Introductions

One of the earliest preserved pieces believed to be ragtime is The Dream Rag (originally The Bull Dyke's Dream) by Jessie Pickett.^[4] Eubie Blake, who learned it from Pickett around 1900, believed it predated the American Civil War.^[4] This piece notably incorporated a habanera rhythm, highlighting early Spanish musical influences on the genre.^[4] The broader American public was first introduced to this nascent style at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, where Pickett, Scott Joplin, and Ben Harney were among the performers.^[4][5]

🌆 Mississippi Valley Hotbeds

The composed ragtime of the 1890s primarily emerged from African American communities in the Mississippi Valley, particularly St. Louis.^[4] Many early ragtime musicians, often playing by ear and improvising on banjo or piano, performed in informal settings such as brothels, bars, saloons, and juke joints. These vibrant environments fostered a unique blend of European classical music and African-American folk songs, creating a fertile ground for new musical expressions.

📝 First Publications

The first published ragtime composition was "La Pas Ma La" in 1895 by minstrel comedian Ernest Hogan.^[7] The following year, Kentucky native Ben Harney's "You've Been a Good Old Wagon But You Done Broke Down" became a hit, significantly popularizing the genre to a mainstream audience.^[7][8] The emergence of mature ragtime is often dated to 1897, with the publication of important early rags like "Harlem Rag" by Tom Turpin and "Mississippi Rag" by William Krell. Scott Joplin's "Maple Leaf Rag," published in 1899, further showcased the genre's depth and sophistication, heavily influencing subsequent composers.^[14]

💃 Dance Forms

Ragtime encompassed a variety of styles, often associated with popular dance forms of the era. These included:

• Cakewalk: A pre-ragtime dance popular until about 1904, often depicted as an African American dance contest with a cake prize. Many early rags were cakewalks.
• Characteristic March: Marches incorporating syncopated elements, often reflecting the perceived characteristics of African Americans.
• Two-step: A pre-ragtime dance popular until around 1911, with numerous rags composed as two-steps.
• Slow Drag: Another dance form closely linked to early ragtime, though fewer rags were explicitly labeled as such.

🎤 Vocal Expressions

Vocal forms also played a role in ragtime's popularization:

• Coon Song: A pre-ragtime vocal form popular until about 1901, characterized by crude, racist lyrics often performed by white artists in blackface. While contributing to the spread of ragtime rhythms, it was deeply problematic. Ernest Hogan, despite popularizing ragtime, later expressed shame for his "All Coons Look Alike to Me."^[30]
• Ragtime Song: A more generic vocal form of ragtime, moving beyond the derogatory themes of coon songs. Irving Berlin was a commercially successful composer in this style, though his famous "Alexander's Ragtime Band" (1911) contained minimal actual ragtime syncopation.

🎹 Piano Innovations

The piano was central to ragtime, spawning several distinct styles:

• Folk Ragtime: Originating from small towns or folk traditions, often featuring unusual chromatic elements from self-taught composers.
• Classic Rag: The refined Missouri-style ragtime championed by Scott Joplin and his contemporaries, known for its structural sophistication.
• Novelty Piano: Emerging after World War I, this style emphasized speed and technical complexity, often leveraging new piano roll technology. Zez Confrey's "Kitten on the Keys" (1921) is a prime example.
• Stride Piano: Developed by black East-coast pianists like James P. Johnson and Fats Waller after WWI, this improvisational style is considered a successor to ragtime. Johnson's "Charleston" is a notable stride piece.

🎸 Beyond the Keys

While piano-centric, ragtime's influence extended to other instruments and forms:

• Ragtime Guitar: Popular into the 1930s, featuring skilled guitar work accompanying songs, with artists like Reverend Gary Davis and Blind Boy Fuller.
• Transcriptions: Many piano rags were transcribed for other instruments and ensembles, notably Gunther Schuller's arrangements of Joplin's works.
• Ragtime Opera: Scott Joplin harbored ambitions to synthesize ragtime with opera, composing works like Treemonisha, which was rediscovered and staged decades after his lifetime, and the lost opera A Guest of Honor.^[34][35]

🕰️ Early Resurgences

Although jazz largely supplanted ragtime in mainstream popularity by the early 1920s, the genre has experienced several significant revivals. In the early 1940s, many jazz bands began to incorporate ragtime into their repertoire, and 78 rpm records of Joplin's compositions were produced as early as 1936.^[42] These early efforts often involved jazz musicians re-scoring old piano rags for jazz instruments, giving the classic style a fresh sound, as seen with Pee Wee Hunt's popular version of Euday L. Bowman's "Twelfth Street Rag."

📺 The 1960s Renaissance

A more substantial revival took hold in the 1950s, making a wider variety of historical ragtime styles available on records and inspiring new compositions. The 1960s saw two major catalysts for increased public recognition:

• The publication of Harriet Janis and Rudi Blesh's 1960 book, They All Played Ragtime, often referred to as "The Ragtime Bible," which provided the first comprehensive documentation of the early ragtime era and its key composers.^[21]
• The rise of Max Morath, who created two television series for National Educational Television (PBS) in 1960 and 1962, The Ragtime Era and The Turn of the Century, educating and entertaining audiences about the genre.^[21]

🎬 The 1970s Explosion

The 1970s witnessed a dramatic ragtime resurgence, driven by several key events:

• Pianist Joshua Rifkin's 1971 compilation, Scott Joplin: Piano Rags, which earned a Grammy nomination and presented Joplin's work as serious classical music.^[22]
• The New York Public Library's release of The Collected Works of Scott Joplin, sparking renewed musical interest and new stagings of Joplin's opera Treemonisha.^[34][43]
• The New England Ragtime Ensemble's Grammy-winning recording of The Red Back Book, featuring Joplin's tunes in period orchestrations.^[23]
• The immensely popular 1973 film The Sting, with its Marvin Hamlisch soundtrack of Joplin rags, particularly "The Entertainer," which became a Top 5 hit in 1975 and won an Academy Award.^[44][45]

🎭 Modern Interpretations

Ragtime's influence continues into contemporary culture. E. L. Doctorow's historical novel Ragtime was adapted into a film in 1980, featuring an original score by Randy Newman. Later, a Broadway stage version of Ragtime premiered in 1998, showcasing a blend of rags and other musical styles. These modern interpretations demonstrate the enduring appeal and adaptability of ragtime, solidifying its place as a cherished and influential genre in American musical history.

📜 References