Joplin, composer of the Maple Leaf Rag. He elevated the piano rag to an artistic level unmatched before or since.
Born in Texarkana, Texas in 1868, Joplin taught himself to play the piano. In his late teens he started working as a piano player in saloons and brothels. Employment opportunities for black musicians were extremely limited during this period because of the racism that pemeated American life.
By 1894 Joplin was playing piano at the Maple Leaf Club in Sedalia, Missouri. While in Missouri he toured with a local band and studied music at George Smith College. His Maple Leaf Rag published in 1899 became the benchmark for ragtime music that others copied.
Ragtime took America by storm in the late 1890's dominating commercial music from 1897 through 1917. In ragtime, bass notes establish the beat while the melody wanders. The effect is lilting and lively.
A hint of the syncopated rythyms of ragtime can be found in vocal styles popularized by minstrel shows in the mid-nineteenth century. This evolved into a syncopated instrumental style that became associated with the Cakewalk, a dance craze starting in 1889.
It also led to a music genre called the patrol. A patrol was music written to emulate the sound of a parading minstrel band. It never really caught on. Possibly because by the 1890's minstrel shows were in decline.
Rags fall into three broad categories:: (1) cakewalk rags for dancing; (2) bordello rags for atmosphere and (3) firework rags, for showing off the performers speed and dexterity. The fiddle rags in Hetzler's Fakebook, Black and White Rag, Stone's Rag, Pig Ankle Rag, Beaumont Rag, Black Mountain Rag and Maple Leaf Rag fall in the first and third categories.
What we think of today as ragtime found its full expression in the hands of itinerant black piano players in the late 1890's. The best remembered of these is Scott
see also Minstrel Show Notes
Department of Special Collections Davidson Library, University of California, Santa Barbara
Listen to a period recording of
The American Symphony Orchestra Edison Records (1909)
Hetzler's Fakebook
a
resource
for
fiddle, banjo,
guitar, mandolin and dulcimer players who want to learn traditional
music.
Scott Joplin (1868-1917)
Side Note: When we think of ragtime today we think of Scott Joplin. However, one of the most prolific ragtime composers in pre WWI America was a Russian immigrant by the name of Israel Baline.
Little of his ragtime music remains, but he went on to become the quintessential American composer.
Israel Baline is better known today as Irving Berlin.
