Ragtime

Ragtime, American musical genre, mainly for piano, that reached its greatest popularity between 1897 and World War I. Usually in ²₄ time, it is characterized by syncopated melodies over a regularly accented bass. Its roots are in minstrel-show plantation songs, cakewalks, banjo playing, and black folk music; it also drew on, and recast in fresh ways, the chromatic harmonies of 19th-century European music. Created by itinerant professional performers in saloons and honky-tonks, ragtime was ultimately disseminated by piano rolls and printed music. It is a sophisticated genre requiring considerable technical skill. Its systematic syncopation—using patterns found in African American music throughout the Americas—was its critical contribution to jazz. Among outstanding ragtime composers were Scott Joplin, whose 'Maple Leaf Rag' (1899) inaugurated ragtime as a national craze; Thomas Turpin; James Scott; and Eubie Blake. Played at unrushed tempo in Joplin's classical St. Louis style, it gained a faster, “hotter” character in the hands of New Orleans players such as Jelly Roll Morton.