Ragtime and More

[Tom47]

I remember back in 1956 when I was nine I started hearing about this thing called “Rock ‘n’ Roll” and I wondered where it had come from.  Well since then I’ve learned that the music being called “Rock ‘n’ Roll” actually existed long before the name.  According to the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History Leo Mintz, an owner of a record store, started to call Rhythm & Blues records Rock ‘n’ Roll “In order to eliminate the racial tone of this music.”   The term Rhythm & Blues was coined in 1948 to replace the term “Race Music,” which was used to identify music directed toward an African-American audience.  At the same time there was a disc jockey by the name of Alan Freed working in Akron OH and he and Mintz met.  In July of 1951 Freed with the help of Mintz started the “The Moondog Rock & Roll House Party” on WJW-Am in Cleveland Ohio.  So, both Rock n Roll and Rhythm and Blues were used to try to direct this type of music to more than one racial group by making it more acceptable to white listeners.  Now, music performed by and listened to by African-Americans (Race Music) has a long history in America mostly likely going back to 1619.  This then brings us to Ragtime.

The term Ragtime or a Rag as pertaining to music is from 1897 and is perhaps in reference to the syncopated melody.  “Syncopation is the accenting of a note which would usually not be accented.”  This could mean that the “Melody is played on ‘weak’ beats” or the “Melody is played between beats.”  See here: https://www.musictheoryacademy.com/understanding-music/syncopation/.  Ragtime is not the only type of music that uses syncopation.  The Library of Congress defines Ragtime as “A genre of musical composition for the piano, generally in duple meter and containing a highly syncopated treble lead over a rhythmically steady bass,” so the treble and the syncopated part would be played by the right hand and the steady bass by the left.  Also, according to the Library of Congress, History of Ragtime “Ragtime was both exciting and threatening to America’s youth and staid polite society, respectively.  The excitement came from syncopation – the displacing of the beat from its regular and assumed course of meter. Syncopation caused an individual to feel a propulsion, swing, and if played correctly, a musical looseness generally unknown to the public at large.”  See here: https://www.loc.gov/item/ihas.200035811/.  Ragtime also tended to be uptempo.  

Tom,

[Tom47]

The Ragtime composer par excellence is Scott Joplin, born in or near Texarkana in 1867 or 1868.  One source gives his date of birth as November 24, 1868.  While Scott Joplin didn’t invent ragtime, no one invents any type of music. they develop over time, he refined it and had a great influence on it.  As such he was perhaps the most important or at least one of the most important figures in the history of modern music.  As I see it Mr. Joplin did for modern music what Johann Sebastian Bach did for what is commonly called “Classical Music.”  Scott Joplin is the modern J. S. Bach.  While Scott Joplin has slowly become more recognized as the great composer he was, it seems to me he has not had the recognition he deserves.  

One of my favorite pieces of music of all time is Maple Leaf Rag.  Scott Joplin wrote it c. 1898 (it was published in 1899) while he was working in the Maple Leaf Club in Sedalia, Missouri.  Here are three versions of the tune:

The first is a 3 minute long version “. . . recorded on Pianola Roll actually played by Scott Joplin . . .”  During the composer’s life record disks and cylinders were mechanically recorded without electronic amplification which resulted in significant distortions.  Some piano rolls for player pianos were made directly by the artist playing on a piano which produced the roll automatically so this is a much truer recording of the composer playing his own composition.  Very good.  See here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pM - AtL7n_-rc. 

Next is a video entitled Maple Leaf Rag - way too fast with a young woman - Kristen Mosca - performing.  While Scott Joplin may have thought that ragtime was often played too fast, I like this version and like uptempo rags, see here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jiLjm5ovuk.  Ms. Mosca has a channel at https://www.youtube.com/c/KristenMosca/videos with many more rags, some of her own.

As this is Ballet Alert I felt that this version is particularly appropriate.  It is a 15 minute long video of Martha Graham’s Maple Leaf Rag ballet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13y1diTWTJg.  

Keep Calm and listen to Rags.

Tom,    

[On Pointe]

The Graham piece was quite something.  She seems to be parodying herself with the sturm und drang opening,  which oddly reminded me of the Kingdom of the Shades scene in La Bayadere.  While it was much better than MacMillan's version in my opinion,  I didn't feel that she understood the rhythmic impulse of Elite Syncopations any better than he did.  I thought that the best part was the waltz  Bethena,  at least the parts where she played it straight and didn't go for a laugh.

I would love to see choreographers make use of Joplin's work that isn't as well known,  like Solace and Magnetic Rag.  (Although Solace was used brilliantly in the movie The Sting.)   But those pieces are melancholic and introspective and for some reason,  rag can't seem to get out of the light comedy category.  While I'd like to believe that artists of any background can tackle the material,  Joplin's music is fundamentally Black American and maybe a Black American choreographer could approach it more organically than MacMillan and Graham.

[Helene]

Donald Byrd used Scott Joplin in his work, "The Mistrel Show Revisited."

https://amsterdamnews.com/news/2015/10/28/donald-byrd-talks-about-minstrel-show-revisited/

From this description, I wouldn't guess he was using Joplin's contemplative music, but he wouldn't have been using Joplin's lighter-sounding music the same way Graham or MacMillan:

Quote

Certainly, even 25 years later, some of the old electricity does still crackle. A quarter century of artists repurposing racist caricature (Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, Ann Liv Young) hasn't weakened the horror we feel at seeing blackface onstage. As before, Byrd uses this discomfort as a galvanizing force.There'sward audience participation, in which Byrd trains volunteers to be Bones and Tambo in a minstrelsy routine; performers wear shoeblack faces and white-painted grins, dancing like demented puppets to Scott Joplin and shrieking with awful laughter.

I don't know if that's the only piece in which Byrd used Joplin's music:  the only list I can find (Wikipedia) doesn't include composers.

[Tom47]

On Pointe and Helene, thank you for your comments.  I would like to read more discussions on this and the topics dealing with women.  Maybe I missed something, but I’m not sure of the reference to MacMillan.  On Pointe, I’m glad you indicated that Joplin’s works can be “melancholic and introspective”.

Tom,   

[On Pointe]

MacMillan choreographed his own Elite Syncopations ballet for the Royal Ballet,  notable,  to me anyway,  for illustrating a complete lack of understanding and connection with Joplin's music.  I don't agree entirely with the notion of "cultural appropriation",  but that ballet skirts close.  Maybe " cultural pastiche" is more accurate,  or choreographic tourism,  similar to the Chinese dance in the second act of The Nutcracker,  or all of La Bayadere or Lakme.

I also don't see any connection between Joplin and minstrelsy,  but I've never seen Donald Byrd's piece,  so I can't express an opinion on that.  Joplin flourished in an era when almost every middle class home had a piano and an accomplished pianist who played it for family entertainment.  The Maple Leaf Rag was the first published sheet music to sell more than a million copies.  Joplin put his photograph on his music,  so there would be no doubt in the public's mind that his compositions were created by a Black man,  not a black face parodist.  This was a bold act in the 1890s - well into their careers in the 1960s,  the Supremes were not pictured on their albums because of fears that the white general public wouldn't buy them if Black women were on the cover.

[sandik]

A couple of thoughts:

Graham's setting of the Maple Leaf Rag is indeed an in-joke for her.  Early in her career, when Louis Horst composed many of the scores for her work, or introduced her to other contemporary composers of that time, he would accompany her rehearsals.  Often, when she was stuck for the next thing to do, she would ask Horst to play the Maple Leaf Rag, as a kind of break from the tension.

Joplin's work frequently drew from the African American folk music of his day -- while he didn't really participate in blackface minstrelsy, the audiences of his time would have recognized the connections.  Current day audiences, which are the focus of Byrd's work, do not necessarily make those distinctions. 

[Tom47]

On Point, interesting information about Scott Joplin putting “. . . his photograph on his music, so there would be no doubt in the public’s mind that his composition was created by a Black man, not a black face parodist” and also the information on the Supremes.  Another interesting point is “, , , an era when almost every middle class home had a piano and an accomplished pianist who played it for family entertainment,” so different from today.  Thank you.

Sandik, thank you for your thoughts.  Seems as if Martha Graham enjoyed the Maple Leaf Rag and she certainly did have fun with it in her ballet.  

Tom,

[Tom47]

Ragtime can be considered to be the “Rhythm” part of “Rhythm and Blues” (R&B) and of course “Blues” is the “Blues” part.  Like Ragtime, Blues developed in the African-American community in the southeastern states and while I’ve read that it originated during the last third of the 19th century, it seems to me that its roots go back to to 1619, the date of the first African-American community in the American British Colonies and even further back to Africa itself.  

The use of the word “blue” to denote saddest, may have been European in origin, possibly from the bruised skin being “black and blue” (see here https://wordhistories.net/2017/08/18/origin-of-blues/) or West African as blue indigo was used in “death and mourning ceremonies where the mourner’s clothes were dyed blue to indicate misfortune and suffering” (see here https://santafe.com/a-history-of-blues-music/).  My feeling is that red is associated with excitement, activity, liveliness and something one must be alert to, because of this blue being near the opposite end of the rainbow could have become associated with depression, sadness and inactivity.  

In any case “The Blues” is predominantly about heartbreak and sorrow although it’s not the only form of song which has that theme.  According to the BBC Music magazine website “The main features of blues include: specific chord progressions, a walking bass, call and response, dissonant harmonies, syncopation, melisma and flattened ‘blue’ notes.  Blues is known for being microtonal, using pitches between the semitones defined by a piano keyboard.”  (See here: https://www.classical-music.com/features/articles/blues-music/).  Further, according to this webpage (https://www.leadguitarlessons.com/guitar-lessons/scales/the-blues-scale.htm) “The blues scale is a 6 note scale that comes from the minor pentatonic [five note] scale.  The reason the blues scale is different from other scales is that the note that’s added to the minor pentatonic scale to create the blues scale does not naturally occur in the key it’s being played in.” 

Twelve Bar Blue is a form that I particularly like.  This is a lyrical form where the second four bars are for the most part a repeat of the first four and where the last four bars are in effect an answer to the first eight.  As in Memphis Minnie and Kansas Joe McKoy’s When the Levee Break (1929):

If it keeps on rainin’, levee’s goin’ to break

If it keeps on rainin’, levee’s goin’ to break

And the water gonna come in, have no place to stay

This 12 Bar Blues song was inspired by the tragic Mississippi flood of 1927.  Many people may be more familiar with the Led Zeppelin version.  There is also a 7 minute vision by Zepparella, an all female band.  Since I prefer female vocalists, that is my favorite version.  See here (7 minutes): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xH-_9cwdLug.

Christopher “W.C,” Handy was born in Muscle Shoals, Alabama on November 16, 1873.  He was an early, influential figure in the evolution of the Blues genre.  Interestingly Handy was born just 5 or 6 years after Scott Joplin, both to parents who had been enslaved and the birth places of each, Texarkana for Joplin and Muscle Shoals for Handy, (approximately 400 miles apart) that is East Texas and Alabama, can be seen as the western and eastern edges of where modern music was being incubated during the later part of the 19th century, with Saint Louis and New Orleans being the northern and southern points and Memphis, Tennessee being more or less the center.

This link goes to a recording (3 minutes) of W.C. Handy’s 1914 Memphis Blues.  The music, an instrumental, was recorded in 1914.  I assume that Handy is playing along with the Victor Military Band, but that is not certain from the information given: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGqBmlZR3dc. 

A second major, early figure in the Blues genre was Bessie Smith.  She was born on April 15, 1894 in Chattanooga, Tennessee.  At age 11 or so she was singing on street corners for money.  Later on she performed in tent shows, traveling minstrel shows and in vaudeville.  Her first recording Down Hearted Blues was in 1923.  In the following, 3 minute video, she sings Saint Louis Blues “. . . with Orchestra (Louis Armstrong -- cornet . . .:”  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rd9IaA_uJI.  It is not clear if the recording was made in 1925 or 1935.  I like 12 Bar Blues.

By the way the picture at the beginning of the last video is by the artist Tamara de Lempicka (b. 1898 in Poland).

Tom,

[On Pointe]

The blues aren't always blue.  Within the musical form,  the songs can be sexy,  joyful and humorous,  too.  Here's a B B King song with one of my favorite lines - "Nobody loves me but my mother - and she could be jivin' too!"

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SyI8rdWKiTI

 

[dirac]

I have fond memories of San Francisco Ballet in "Elite Syncopations." Tan and Possokhov were fine in the leads, especially him, and Julie Diana distinguished herself in the second cast. Most especially Muriel Maffre and James Sofranko in the "Alaskan Rag."

The ballet was also something of a signature piece for the National Ballet of Canada back then. 

[Tom47]

On Pointe, first, thank you very much for the link, I enjoyed it.  "Nobody loves me but my mother - and she could be jivin' too!" is a great line.  There are many characteristics to The Blues and the way I see it there may be no ideal Blues song that contains all of them, but the more characteristics a song may contain the closer to this ideal they can be considered to be, but still be The Blues.  So, you’re correct Blues songs can be sexy, joyful and certainly humorous.  When I first came to Ballet Alert I asked what ballet is.  Since then I've begun to feel that an “ideal” ballet has certain characteristics, but not all “ballets” may have all of those characteristics and some “non ballets’ may contain some of those characteristics.  I think of Blues music as being sung throughout, but there are instrumental Blues.  For the sake of discussion (this is for everyone), while I enjoyed this B.B. King song and I felt happy listening to it. I prefer female vocalists, if only because through my life I’ve heard so many more male vocalists, because there are so many more male singers and I am now biased against them.  

Also, thank you Dirac for mentioning “Elite Syncopations.”  I haven't seen it, but I enjoy Rags and in particular Joplin’s music so much I believe I would enjoy it.  While there is a historical connection between Ragtime and the Blues as seen in the term Rhythm and Blues and that’s why I wrote about both in this one topic, Rags tend to be instrumentals and upbeat (joyous), while I think of Blues as tending to be sung and, with exceptions, tending toward heartbreak and sorrows.  

Tom,

[Helene]

In Flamenco, while there are pretty strickly light and flirtatious palos (similar to categories/types of ballroom dance), many sorrowful Soleas end with upbeat Bulerias, which means mocking or teasing.  So just as the American Romanian Cultural Society (ARCS) calls their annual film festival, "One Eye Laughing, One Eye Crying," there are genres that more complex than sad or happy.

[Tom47]

Interesting point Helene.  I don’t know a lot about Flamenco.  Such a “teasing” at the end of a sorrowful dance would add fun to it - sort of a musical “wink” saying “I will nonetheless get by.  A favorite piece of music I associate with Flamenco is Habanera from “Carmen '' although it's my understanding that the music, in some form, existed before the opera.

Tom,

[Tom47]

 

Treemonisha

In 1911 Scott Joplin published a 230 page score for piano and eleven singers for his opera Treemoisha.  It was performed in 1915 without costumes and without scenery in an unsuccessful attempt to get financial support for a full scale production.  The setting of the opera is 1884 in the area surrounding Texarkana.  Interestingly Scott Joplin would have been 17 or 18 years old in 1884, about the same age of Treemonisha, the work’s title character, although Treemonisha was a young woman and Joplin was born in the area surrounding Texarkana.  An important point is that all of the characters in the opera are African-American, the good characters, the villains, the smart and heroic characters and the not so smart characters.  It takes place on an abandoned plantation, operated by sharecroppers.  

Treemoisha was finally staged in its complete, orchestrated form in 1972.  Here is a 5 minute long video of “Delores Ivory as Monisha explaining [in song] how Treemonisha was found abandoned under a tree.”  It is from a 1982 performance staged by the Houston Grand Opera: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3hsbvX3So4.  In this video and the next Treemonisha is played by Carmen Balthrop.

This next video, 6 minutes long, a Real Slow Drag is the finale to the opera.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukgWU6JCZkg.  Also staged by the Houston Grand Opera.  

Here in three parts is the full performance of the Houston Grand Opera’s Treemonisha.  Very worthwhile viewing for the music and dancing as well as for the historical significance.

Part One: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6ynOUAFIG8 (26 minutes).

Part Two: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHG6PMUUHOA (30 minutes)

Part Three: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Sr5AokEGGg (30 minutes)

In addition to the singers mentioned above, Obba Babatunde danced and sang the role of zodetrick and Cora Johnson danced and sang the role of Lucy.  

Scott Joplin also wrote The Ragtime Dance that was staged in 1899 and an opera entitled A Guest of Honor in 1903.  It is believed to have been about Booker T. Washington's 1901 official visit to the White House.  That opera did tour for a couple of months, but since then the score has been lost.  

Tom,