Negro Folk Elements in Classic Ragtime

Abstract

Ragtime was similar in many ways to the marches and dances popular in the 1890's, for like them it consisted of short melodic sections repeated according to a formal pattern, with accompanying harmonies that relied heavily on tonic-dominant progressions. Unlike its contemporary musical fashions, however, emphasized a highly developed rhythmic syncopation, and melodies and harmonies which contained a full and subtle use of Negro folk elements. Present-day students of early Negro music have tended to ignore the melodic and harmonic resources, but these aspects of the music deserve comment, for in the classic pieces, the early Negro composers developed the possibilities of their folk idiom to a remarkable extent. Ragtime was first heard as part of the musical entertainment in the wine rooms and sporting houses in the mid-Western United States. It was played by Negro and a few white itinerant pianists, many of them highly gifted and all of them close to the sources of folk music. They drifted from one town to the next, following the fairs, the races, and the excursions, and when their evening job was finished, they would meet at a piano in some back-room to play on into the morning. Ideas were exchanged freely and rags were patched together from the bits of melody and scraps of harmony that all contributed. During these formative years, each pianist desired only the making of music and the achievement of a personal playing style, but by 1897, with the first publication of a piece, a distinct kind of composition known as ragtime had developed (Blesh, 1958:17). Many of the ideas of these traveling musicians had begun to enter the stream of popular music when a white band leader, W. H. Krell, published his Mississippi Rag in 1897. More pieces followed by both white and Negro composers, and in 1899, Maple Leaf Rag, by the Negro Scott Joplin, was published in Sedalia, Missouri by John Stark. It had such an unprecedented success that finally came to the attention of a nationwide audience. Thousands of people responded to the lilting melodies and exciting syncopation, and bought copies of the sheet music to play on their parlor pianos. The lively melodies and rhythms shocked conservative listeners, but for the first time in American history, Negro composers were impressing their ideas onto the country's popular instrumental music. If the content of the music was unfamiliar, its form was not. The pieces were organized into highly formalized patterns (not unlike nineteenth century lancers dance patterns, cake walks, and marches) which controlled the exuberance of the syncopation and shaped the music so that it was at least structurally familiar to the parlor pianists. A rag was characteristically written in duple meter, although there were a few waltzes and tangos. The compositions were divided into three, four, or five sections or of 16 measures each, usually with a separate melodic development in each strain. The sections were often repeated according to simple patterns like A A B B A C C D D, with the later strains C and D in a key a fourth higher than the key of strains A and B. 174