User:Jandris/Ragtime Song

The Wikipedia article on ragtime states that "Many of the terms associated with ragtime have inexact definitions, and are defined differently by different experts; the definitions are muddled further by the fact that publishers often labelled pieces for the fad of the moment rather than the true style of the composition. There is even disagreement about the term "ragtime" itself." This article attempts to piece together a map of the possible meanings of the important concept, ragtime song.

Does 'Ragtime Song' have a distinct meaning?
The Wikipedia article on ragtime notes that some experts include the term 'ragtime song' in the definition of ragtime, while others exclude it. However, Berlin argues forcefully that during the initial period of ragtime's emergence and popularity it was primarily ragtime songs which were being written about, and only secondarily piano or band music.

Musical Tributaries
Most writers on the subject recognize that ragtime and the ragtime song were generated out of the intermingling of several musical tributaries present in the 19th and 20th Centuries in the USA.
 * There was the  march, which became widely popular during the 19th Century and further popularized by the band music of John Philip Sousa (1854-1932). Berlin argues convincingly that a rag is a syncopated march.
 * The cakewalk, a dance which originated in the slave population of Southern plantations during the 19th Century, attained general popularity and fused with ragtime for a time in the 1890's.
 * Berlin, citing several sources, finds another, earlier musical influence of ragtime in 'black character pieces and patrols'. Minstrelry—following the Civil war, where black soldiers were depicted in a comic, but derogatory manor—associated certain musical conventions of syncopation and mode with the appearance on stage of such characters.
 * Tawa finds a still earlier influence in that  minstrel performers were singing songs—which were full of life and bouyant—in pseudo-African-American dialect as early as the 1820's. Some of these songs contained elements of syncopation.
 * The coon song shared musical form and the popular stage for a decade or so, before morphing into more polite forms of emulation and eventually dying out, following a growing awareness of its racist and stereotypical aspects.
 * Caribbean and/or Latin American rhythmic forms, in particular the  habañera, have influenced some ragtime compositions since Louis Moreau Gottschalk used the music of his Louisiana youth in his compositions. Scott Joplin wrote at least one rag with habañera rhythms, Solace, and habañera has emerged in contemporary times in terra verde.
 * Lowell Schreyer argues that without the banjo, the history of ragtime piano might have been different. West Africans carried unique rhythms on slave ships via dance and the banjo, which resembled older instruments in existence before 1800. African rhythms are irregular, judged by Western European standards. Banjoists were playing some syncopated forms before the emergence of published piano ragtime, but then the development of that form, in turn, enriched banjo ragtime.