Ragtime, the descriptive term for a uniquely American style of popular music and, more broadly, for the time period (ca. 1890–1920) when it emerged and gained popularity. A colloquial contraction of “ragged time,” “ragtime” underscores the music's most identifying feature—its highly syncopated rhythms. The term also evokes the energy, optimism, and insecurity of the national culture during the transitional years between the Chicago World's Fair of 1893, where ragtime first reached the general public, and the end of World War I, when jazz replaced it.

The earliest appearance of ragtime is impossible to date or place precisely, but itinerant African‐American piano players in such cities as St. Louis, New Orleans, and Baltimore in the post‐Reconstruction Era created a synthesis that by the early 1890s came to define a distinct style. Drawing from the ubiquitous brass bands and minstrel shows, as well as from traditional dance music, these performers developed a two‐handed, percussive approach that, once it became available through sheet music, piano rolls, and—eventually—recordings, offered a spirited change from the more sedate and sentimental styles of the period. At their most basic, ragtime rhythms consisted of a syncopated treble line (melody) juxtaposed against a regular bass and chord (harmony) pulse. By the mid‐1890s, such rhythms were being applied to both the standard form of the march and to the song form. The emerging popular‐music business, centralized in New York City after 1900, quickly appropriated both ragtime rhythms and the expression ( Irving Berlin's Alexander's Ragtime Band of 1911 is a notable example). In addition, beginning with the Cakewalk fad of the 1890s, the association of ragtime with new forms of social dancing made it a focus of the larger debate over changing patterns of urban social behavior.

Instrumental ragtime, the style's more enduring strain, evolved from the application of ragtime rhythms to the form and beat of the march. The first instrumental rag to appear in print, William Krell's Mississippi Rag (1897), was soon followed by Tom Turpin's Harlem Rag, the first by a black composer. In 1899, Scott Joplin (1868–1917) began publishing his ragtime compositions in Sedalia, Missouri, including Maple Leaf Rag, which became the most celebrated rag of all time. A formally trained serious musician, Joplin dominated ragtime composition during his lifetime, writing dozens of rags as well as two “ragtime” operas—The Guest of Honor (1903) and Treemonisha (1911). His compositions, along with those of his pupils, collaborators, and followers, comprise a body of work, often described as classic ragtime, intended to be performed as written—for piano, primarily, but also in orchestral arrangements.

By 1920 the term ragtime began to seem old fashioned, and both classic ragtime and the once‐popular ragtime songs and dances lost their currency. The music continued to influence American popular music, however, and was crucial to the emergence and diffusion of jazz. The mid‐1940s witnessed a modest revival of interest, and in the 1970s a more substantial and lasting reassessment was initiated by a series of best‐selling recordings of classic ragtime, a new production of Joplin's Treemonisha by the Houston Grand Opera (a work never fully performed in his lifetime), and the adaptation of Joplin's music for the movie The Sting, which received an Academy Award for best film score in 1974.
See also African Americans; Dance; Music: Popular Music; Popular Culture; Progressive Era.

Bibliography

Rudy Blesh and and Harriet Janis , They All Played Ragtime, 1950.
Edward A. Berlin , King of Ragtime: Scott Joplin and His Era, 1994.

Reid Badger

RAGTIME

RAGTIME dominated American popular music style from the mid-1890s to about 1920. The word "ragtime" seems to have evolved from a compound term, "rag time" or "ragged time," describing the syncopated and percussive nature of the music. Ragtime's 1970s revival, boosted by the popularity of George Roy Hill's film The Sting (1973), whose soundtrack featured some of the most poignant and evocative of Scott Joplin's piano rags, put the piano at the center of popular perceptions of ragtime. Consequently, even some music historians have mistakenly privileged ragtime piano in assessing the genre. In fact, as Edward A. Berlin has argued, ragtime songs like "Mister Johnson Turn Me Loose" and "Under the Bamboo Tree" would probably have been cited by contemporaries as the most important ragtime compositions.

Ragtime's popularity crossed races, opening the way for the later appeal of blues and jazz and the prominence of African Americans as composers and performers of American popular music. Though black musicians and composers largely created ragtime, in its earlier years rag-time included songs with racially derogatory lyrics: "coon songs," in the terminology of the era used by both whites and blacks. Ironic and painful, this phenomenon also typifies the Jim Crow racial hierarchy of the new century.

Despite pockets of largely white resistance based on its identification with "Negro" music and its exciting rhythms, ragtime was adopted by both white and black Tin Pan Alley songwriters and classical composers, so that its distinctive sound has become a kind of shorthand for turn-of-the-century culture and society, first in the United States and then in Europe. Ragtime found a home in nightclubs, marching bands, bourgeois parlors, and concert halls. It helped elevate both the piano and the banjo as popular instruments. Among prominent ragtime composers, arrangers, and popularizers are Scott Joplin, James Scott, James Reese Europe, John Philip Sousa, Irving Berlin, Erik Satie, Claude Debussy, Igor Stravinsky, and Jelly Roll Morton.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Badger, Reid. A Life in Ragtime: A Biography of James Reese Europe. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.

Berlin, Edward A. Ragtime: A Musical and Cultural History. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980.

Hasse, John Edward. Ragtime: Its History, Composers, and Music. New York: Schirmer, 1985.

MinaCarson

See alsoMinstrel Shows ; Music: Popular .

Ragtime (1998), a musical play by Terrence McNally (book), Stephen Flaherty (music), Lynn Ahrens (lyrics). [Ford Center, 861 perf.] Based on E. L. Doctorow's sprawling novel about turn‐of‐the‐century America, the musical follows three different groups of characters: an upper‐class white family in which Father ( Mark Jacoby) tries to maintain the old ways while Mother ( Marin Mazzie) discovers her individuality and her Younger Brother ( Steven Sutcliffe) becomes an anarchist; the Jewish immigrant Tateh ( Peter Friedman) who rises from a peddler to a silent movie mogul; and the African‐American ragtime pianist Coalhouse Walker ( Brian Stokes Mitchell) who goes on a killing rampage when he is insulted and his fiancée Sarah ( Audra McDonald) is killed. The three stories overlap and, peopled with such famous personages as Harry Houdini ( Jim Corti), Evelyn Nesbit ( Lynette Perry), and Emma Goldman ( Judy Kaye), form a complex panorama of an explosive time in history. Notable songs: Wheels of a Dream; Back to Before; Your Daddy's Son; New Music; Make Them Hear You. The ambitious musical was well received with applause for the script, score, cast, Frank Galati's direction, Graciela Daniele's choreography, Eugene Lee's stunning scenic design, and Santo Loquasto's period costumes. Produced by Livent, Inc., Ragtime was such an expensive production that it failed to recoup even after a nearly three‐year run.

ragtime. Early type of jazz, particularly for solo pf., and comp. rather than improvised. Famous exponent and composer of it was Scott Joplin. Popular from c.1895–1920, when other forms of jazz took over, but it had a revival in 1970s, when Joplin's mus. was used for the film The Sting. Stravinsky comp. Ragtime for 11 instr. (1918) and Piano-Rag Music (1919). A Rag is a ragtime comp. To rag is to play in ragtime.

rag·time / ˈragˌtīm/ • n. music characterized by a syncopated melodic line and regularly accented accompaniment, evolved by black American musicians in the 1890s and played esp. on the piano.

ragtime music characterized by a syncopated melodic line and regularly accented accompaniment, evolved by black American musicians in the 1890s and played especially on the piano; it is now seen as the immediate precursor of jazz.

Ragtime, novel by E.L. Doctorow.

ragtime see jazz .

ragtime •begrime, Chaim, chime, climb, clime, crime, dime, grime, half-time, I'm, lime, mime, mistime, part-time, prime, rhyme, rime, slime, sublime, thyme, time •paradigm • Mannheim • Waldheim •Sondheim • Trondheim •Guggenheim • Anaheim • Durkheim •quicklime • brooklime • birdlime •pantomime • ragtime • pastime •bedtime • airtime •daytime, playtime •teatime • mealtime • dreamtime •meantime • peacetime • springtime •anytime • maritime • flexitime •lifetime • nighttime • wartime •downtime • noontime • sometime •one-time • lunchtime • summertime •wintertime • enzyme