Ragtime may be first American music

By Jennifer Brummett
Staff Writer

``I learned so much about circus music last year, I thought I would come and learn about ragtime this year,'' said Edward Berlin, a speaker at the conference on American band history as he began the symposium.

The remark was met with much laughter as author/scholar Berlin is recognized as an expert on ragtime music, the theme this year.

Berlin, of New York, gave an overview of the musical genre. He has written a number of books about it and lectures extensively all over the country.

Distilling it, ragtime is ``march music played in a special way,'' Berlin said. He said it was the ``purest manifestation of American music,'' and likely the first American music.

It is punctuated by syncopated off beats that, in its heyday from 1896 to 1917, were associated with black American musicians. ``It's always connected with the march, even on piano,'' Berlin said.

``The typical rag is a close cousin of the march.''

America was undergoing a cultural inferiority complex when ragtime was popular, so newspapers would run stories saying the king of England or the czar of Russia liked ragtime music.

Pianist Scott Kirby of New Orleans underscored Berlin's talk with musical accompaniment and illustration. His renditions of ``Maple Leaf Rag,'' ``My Coal Black Lady,'' a medley of John Philip Sousa marches, and ``American Beauty Rag'' were definitely crowd pleasers, all followed by emphatic rounds of applause.

The unevenness of the syncopation in ragtime music is what gives it its name, Berlin said. It is ``ragged'' music, hence, ragtime.

At the beginning of the century when ragtime was popular, few pieces of music were composed as ragtime, but many of them were played in that manner. The music has a light, fun-loving sound - toe-tapping, head-bobbing, feel-good-all-over rhythms.

The first ragtime work - ``My Coal Black Lady'' - appeared in newspapers in 1896. It then became sheet music and a song.

The first performer to gain fame as a ragtime piano player, according to Berlin, was Ben Harney, a Louisvillian. He published ``You've Been A Good Old Wagon But You've Done Broke Down'' in 1895.

Harney was called ``The Ragtime Piano Player.'' Berlin said a case could be made that the first published rag came from Kentucky. William Krell's ``The Mississippi Rag'' was the first official instrumental piece, published in 1897.

Berlin noted the ``racism in ragtime.''

``It was not a time of sensitivity'' to ethnicities, he said. Black people were mocked, insulted and denigrated in advertisements as caricatures. An example was Arthur Pryor's ``A Coon Band Contest,'' with a caricature of blacks on the cover of the sheet music.

``Trombone smears,'' or brass glissandos, are a characteristic of ragtime music, and also one that in the genre's heyday was an attribute associated with black bands. They are also called ``slides.''

Scott Joplin, forever associated with ragtime, hit the scene in 1899. Quiet, serious and somber, he still managed to compose ``some of the liveliest'' and joyful music ever seen, Berlin said. He published ``Maple Leaf Rag,'' a highly recognizable piece and ``Original Rags'' in about 1899.

Ragtime was ``America's popular music, especially with the young, in the early 20th century,'' Berlin said. Deadpan, he added, they drove their parents crazy with their rebellion.

``Ragtime was popular because it had an infectious, irresistible beat,'' he explained.

But it had its critics, too.

Some called ragtime a ``lowering of musical tastes,'' Berlin said, while others said it was a ``product of saloons and brothels.'' Still others believed ragtime music would destroy American society because white youths were being instilled with black qualities.

By 1917, ragtime had paved the way for a new form of music called jazz.

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