1. Ragtime Post Emancipation
First popular worldwide Afro-American music
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2. The Times
 In the pre-record age
music was only heard
in live context.
 Music was therefore
spread in the form of
written scores or piano
rolls.
 Piano rolls were played
on player pianos and
were perforated paper
rolls designed to
produce key actions
when rolled.

3. Origins of Ragtime
 The origins of Rags are firmly within the
Afro-American community.
 Word itself derived from a form of clog
dancing called ‘ragging’.
 Syncopated patterns come out of patting
Juba. (clapping hands and thighs and
stamping feet)

4. The Birth of Ragtime
 Composers in Mid-Western states
used the syncopation and wrote piano
music.
 Was influenced by all the popular
styles of period especially military
band music.

5. The Main Composers
 Scott Joplin (1868-
1917) , Joseph Lamb
(1887-1960) and
James Scott (1886-
1938)
 These composers
similar techniques
created what later
became known as
‘classic rag’ with
standardised form.

6. Musical characteristics
 Mainly a piano instrumental style although
some compositions were adopted for larger
ensembles. (New Orleans Jass, guitar,
clarinet and brass etc.)
 2/4 or 4/4.
 Syncopated.
 Stride bass technique. (alternate tonic,
chord, dominant, chord) moving in half time
to melody.
 Introduction usually of eight bars.
 Compositions structured in 16-32 Bars.
 Modulations in pieces frequently to
dominant or relative minor.

7. Assimilation
 Around the beginning of the 20th
century and late 19th century ‘rags’
began to make their way in to the
general populous in the form of
compositions.
 By 1890 white composers became
involved in genre.
 1895-1915, ragtime was available to
the public in published piano scores,
on piano rolls.

8. Where it Was Played.
 Homes.
 Concerts.

9. Closing
 Ragtime represented a watered down form
of Afro-American expression by eliminating
many syncopations.
 Later ragtime transitional figures such as
Jelly Roll Morton and James P. Johnson
reintroduced advanced syncopation to the
form.
 Introduced many outside of Afro-American
community to the ‘sound’ of music. (blue
notes and syncopations)

10. Works Cited
 Baraka, Amiri. Blues People: Negro
Music in White America. New York: W.
Morrow, 1963. Print.
 Southern, Eileen. The Music of Black
Americans: A History. New York: W.W.
Norton, 1971. Print.

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