![]() The performing style emerged soon after Emancipation and marked the first instance of Black music passing into white society. It would draw influences from African drumming, classical compositions, as well as the banjo and fiddle playing of the European immigrants flooding into America.īut ragtime found its footing in a more disturbing place – the minstrel show – a racist “comedic” performance of mostly white people in blackface, imitating African American music and dancing, which disappointingly, also happens to be the first original American theatrical form. The sound of Ragtime was uniquely American, implanted in the multi-cultural landscape of a still relatively young country and cultivated by the African American pianists of the day. What would emerge would be an intoxicating new genre of music. Ragtime began to evolve on the piano in the late 19 th century and took its name from the act of experimenting with the rhythmic nuisances of a musical piece, the underlying beat in one hand and a syncopated melody in the other to produce a ‘ragged’ musical rhythm that made you want to move. Scott Joplin and his hit, The Entertainer Gestating in the barrelhouses and saloons of the mid west, Ragtime would help create the music industry as we know it, produce its first stars, influence and shape American popular music, revolutionise the way we play classical instruments and divide cultural opinion, all before fading back into the cultural ether. ![]() In the beginning, before Jazz, there was the syncopated melodic march of Ragtime, and for a period, it would captivate a nation, sparking its first popular music craze in history. But it was written by America’s greatest musician that we’re betting you’ve never heard of – an African American composer by the name of Scott Joplin, who laid the cornerstones of what many of us would now think of as American music. “ The Entertainer“, a classic piano rag, is one of the most recognisable melodies of the 20th century (go on, have a quick listen). You know the sound of ragtime even if you don’t think you do. Eblon Theater Orchestra with ragtime star, James Scott second from right
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