Page 4 - Leaf Rag News Today

(EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the first in a series of stories that will run each Sunday in February to commemorate Black History Month.)

Works newly available to copy, republish and remix in 2022 also include poems by Langston Hughes and Dorothy Parker

Hal Smith: Jeff, when you think about the traditional jazz “warhorses”—like “At The Jazz Band Ball,” “That’s A Plenty” or “Fidgety Feet”—traditional jazz musicians usually don’t make too many variations on the order...

Ragtime music, with its syncopated or "ragged" rhythms, is considered by many observers to be the first purely American form of popular music. Drawing on a diversity of styles, ragtime emerged from Black communities in cities like St. Louis toward the end of the 1800s, and one of its most famous composer-performers, Scott Joplin, had plenty of ties to both St. Louis and Sedalia. In Sedalia in 1899, Joplin often played piano in a downtown saloon to help pay his way through college. While doing...

The Shreveport Symphony Orchestra will honor the musical legacy of “The Father of Ragtime,” Scott Joplin with two live in-person and virtual performances this weekend. Joplin, an Ark-La-Tex native, is credited as the inventor of the revolutionary musical style ragtime. The pianist’s works would influence musicians to also push boundaries, leading to the formation of other groundbreaking genres in the 20th century. “It’s fair to say he essentially was the standard-bearer for a brand-ne...

If you have ears to hear lively music, you know the almost-magnetic attraction of ragtime. Ragtime has syncopation. It has energy, it has off-beat notes, and a solid bottom-bass-line. Ragtime is a distinctively-American kind of music, originating in African-American culture.   Ragtime gets its name from being in “ragged time,” with syncopated off-beats, and it was about the most-popular type of music in America by the early 1900s.   Modern-day music aficionados know that Scott Joplin’s ...