Forwarded article on Ragtime Definition
By Robbie Rhodes
>From @CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU:EABQB@QB001.BITNET Tue Oct 24 08:03:30 1995
Date: Tue, 24 Oct 95 10:58 EST
From: Ed Berlin <EABQB%QB001.bitnet@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>
Subject: defining ragtime
To: Robbie Rhodes <rrhodes@foxtail.com>
==========================================================
Hello Robbie,
I had already responded to Tim, but thanks for your mailing.
See you in Fresno?
Ed
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Path: eabqb
Newsgroups: rec.music.ragtime
Date: Fri, 13 Oct 1995 13:58:20 EDT
From: eab <EABQB@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>
Message-ID: <95286.135820EABQB@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>
Disclaimer: Author bears full responsibility for this post
Subject: Re: Defining "ragtime"/"Joplin"
References: <45hse1$mjn@hpax.cup.hp.com>
In article <45hse1$mjn@hpax.cup.hp.com>, dgracyk@cup.hp.com (Donna Gracyk) says:
I expressed to Tim some reservations about his articles & offered to send them to him privately. He asked that I post them. So here goes.....
Ed Berlin
>
>Syncopation is the result of emphasis or accent on beats that
>would normally be considered weak musical beats.
> In 2/4 meter, the weak beat is two. So, according to your description, ragtime is ... one-TWO one-TWO. Right? I don't think so. That's not syncopation.
> Syncopated
>music was not new, but constant syncopation combined with a
>steady rhythm was a novelty in popular music.
> "Constant syncopation"? What do you mean? It never stops? Every measure? Not the ragtime I know.
>
>The music was chiefly developed by African-Americans, with
>important composers and performers including James Scott,
>Artie Matthews, Joe Jordan, Scott Hayden, Eubie Blake, Luckey
>Roberts, James P. Johnson, Jelly Roll Morton.
> Writing for an African American encyclopedia does not mean you must slant your material to the point of distortion. I would go along with black origins of ragtime, but "development" was not so racially exclusive. And listing someone like Scott Hayden certainly weakens your argument, for he was far less important & influential than such white composers as George Botsford, Chas. Johnson, Joe Lamb, .....
> The song-writing industry known as Tin Pan Alley
> recognized ragtime's popularity and
>added "ragtime" and "rag" to countless titles to help
>popularize new vocal numbers, .....
Tin Pan Alley produced only songs? No instrumental sheet music, including rags? The entire _industry_ was known as Tin Alley, including publishers out of New York?
>... but few melodies of instrumental
>rags are suitable for vocals, and few popular vocal numbers
>labeled as "ragtime" are true rags.
> This reads like a neo-Bleshian swipe at Tin Pan Alley. But didn't Luckey Roberts, who you list above as one of the greats, publish entirely (or at least mostly) with Jos. W. Stern, of Tin Pan Alley?
>Ragtime was was already established as a genre when Scott
>Joplin's first two rags were published in 1899, "Original
>Rags" and "Maple Leaf Rag," the latter proving especially
>popular. Perhaps the only rag to surpass it in popularity was
>Euday Louis Bowman's "Twelve Street Rag," published in 1914.
> Maybe "12th St. Rag" did surpass "Maple Leaf" in popularity, but I know of no evidence to support this assertion. What's your evidence?
>Hundreds of rags were written for piano and published in sheet
>music format.
> "Hundreds"? In _Ragtime_ I surveyed more than a thousand, and that was only a sampling.
> Nick Lucas in 1922 made the
>first disc of rags performed on solo guitar....
> Is that so important in the history of ragtime? You make no mention of the first disk of solo piano, of dance band, .....
>
>Distinctions can be made between "folk ragtime," the music of
>pianists with no formal musical training but who played by ear
>and improvised, and "classic ragtime," which is the music of
>trained musicians like Scott Joplin who brought form and
>structure to ragtime.
> Are these the only two styles that can be distinguished? From what you say of folk ragtime, one would not know it was folk by hearing the music; one would have to know whether or not the composer had "formal training." James P. Johnson & Eubie Blake were playing & composing rags before they were musically literate. Would that make their early rags folk?
The form & structure preceded Joplin's entry into the field, & preceded even the advent of ragtime. And the form & structure of folk rags (whatever that might be) is pretty much the same as that of non-folk rags.
>By the 1920s, white pianists influenced
>by ragtime specialized in a semi-virtuosic style of piano
>playing called "novelty piano." Zez Confrey's 1921 "Kitten On
>The Keys" is an example.
Why include anything on novelty. That's a different style. It was not until Dave Jasen invented the term "novelty ragtime" that novelty was included with rags. And anything Jasen likes, he calls ragtime, regardless of what it is. Just look at his folio _101 Authentic Rags_, which includes such things as "In the Mist."
>
>Although ragtime in recent decades has been performed mostly
>by white artists, notable African-American performers in
>recent decades include Eubie Blake, who played ragtime up to
>the year he died in 1983; pianist Hank Jones, who recorded in
>the early 1960s an LP titled This is Ragtime Now!; and
>Reginald Robinson, a contemporary composer who in 1993
>
So few decent black piansts have bothered with ragtime that it's embarrassing to raise the issue.
Eubie certainly was not playing ragtime "to the year he died." He died in Feb. 1983, a few days after his 100th birthday, which was celebrated in his absence because he was so frail.
>
>SCOTT JOPLIN
>
>Born to freed slaves ...
His mother had not been a slave
>
>... in 1868 ...
> I think it was *probably* 1867, but I'm not going to explain my reasons now ....
>in northeast Texas in a town later named Texarkana....
> How can you place his birth there? In the earliest reference I'm aware of he was living 35 miles south of Texarkana.
>recorded eight times during Joplin's life, with "Wall Street
>Rag" being the only other Joplin tune recorded before his
>death.
>
Also Gladiolus.
>
>In 1904 John Stark published Joplin's "The Chrysanthemum--An
>Afro-American Intermezzo," and this is the first time the
>phrase "Afro-American" appears on sheet music.
> Evidence that Afro-American had not been used earlier?
>ballet titled The Ragtime Dance, published in 1906.
>
1902
CODA:
I don't want to discourage you, Tim. You have the right idea. You just have to be a bit more exacting & exercise more self-criticism.
Ed
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