This week's theme: Ragtime music

In todays lesson we will examine "ragtime" or "ragged time" music.
Please pay close attention, this will be on the test.

Before there was rock and roll, before swing music, even before jazz - there 
was Ragtime.
Popular from the end of the 19th century until it evolved into early jazz 
around 1920, Ragtime music was the radical popular cutting edge music of 
it's day.

The key feature of Ragtime is it's heavy use of "syncopation", that is music 
on the "off-beat".

I like these two songs performed by Pee Wee Hunt to illustrate the 
difference between Ragtime and early Jazz since it's the same group playing 
them both. While "Tiger Rag" has "rag" in the title, it is actually an 
example of early jazz.

In Jazz the emphasis is on the "unexpected" - it likes to bounce around a 
lot in an unpredictable manner.

I think most people think of Ragtime music as piano music, but I think 
that's wrong. The few era recordings I have of Ragtime are of bands or other 
groups - NOT piano solos.

What I think happened was that most "rags" came back as "golden oldies" on 
player piano rolls in the 1920s. People who grew up with THAT were nostalgic 
to THAT in the 1950s during which there was a revival of Ragtime music. So 
now Ragtime is forever associated with honky-tonk pianos.

Ragtime saw another revival in 1973 after it was featured in the movie "The 
Sting". The movie takes place in the 1930s - Ragtime isn't from the 1930s 
but it still works for me.