what is ragtime?
MICHELLE SO
Darrell Woodruff
pwi...@methodist.edu
> can anyone tell me the word ragtime came from?
>
> ans...@hotmail.com
And in reply, dwoo...@juno.com wrote:
> http://www.ragtimers.org/faq/
> for some previous answers.
Unfortunately, the FAQ URL referred to does NOT actually give any of
the various theories of the term's origins.
The most socially acceptable theory is that it was derived from "ragged
time," the effect coming from playing the left hand strongly on the beat
while playing the right hand with emphasis on what would normally be
unaccented beats.
However, another theory has "ragtime" coming from the music's seamier
origins in red-light districts. When the women of a particular house
would be on their menstrual cycle ("on the rag") and therefore unable
to work, they would hang out downstairs in the parlor, clustered around
the piano listening to the "professor." When a potential customer asked
what the girls were doing there, why they weren't upstairs, or, more to
the point, why he couldn't take one of them upstairs himself, the madam
was supposed to have said, "it's rag time."
The reasons why this theory does not appear in GROVE'S, the OED, or THEY
ALL PLAYED RAGTIME should be obvious.
Some ragtime authorities define the music strictly in terms of its piano
origins -- even going so far as to claim that songs are, ipso facto, NOT
ragtime, nor are any of the syncopated waltzes written by Scott Joplin,
James Scott, et al. (And forget trying to classify oddities like James
Reese Europe's "Castles' Half and Half," which has a 5/4 time signature.)
However, Ed Berlin makes a strong case that the earliest uses of the term
were applied to songs and that "classical" piano ragtime was a later
development. And Charles Hamm, in his book on Irving Berlin's early work,
SONGS FROM THE MELTING POT, develops this idea still further and makes the
case that, during the ragtime era, the term was applied to a concept of
_performance_, not composition. So while modern musicologists have to dig
into "Alexander's Ragtime Band" to find the instances of syncopation that
would make it "true" ragtime, the discussion is ultimately irrelevant.
The song was accepted as ragtime in 1910 because of the spirit of the tune
as it was _played_, not as it was written.
---
Doc
internet: http://www.geocities.com/~pfwilson
email: pwi...@methodist.edu
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