Eubie Blake - Ragtime Muscian and Broadway Composer, performing at age 90.

Ragtime

At a Glance

An American popular music style that flourished c.1896-1918. Its main trait is its ragged (i.e. syncopated) rhythm. Although now thought of as a piano style, it also referred to other instrumental music, vocal music and dance. Most instrumental rags follow the forms of earlier duple- and quadruple- metre dances - the march, two-step, polka and schottische - with three or more independent 16-bar phrases, each consisting of four-bar phrases in patterns of repeats and reprises. There might also be an introduction or interpolations. A school of ‘classic’ ragtime whose principal exponent was Scott Joplin achieved considerable sophistication, though simpler, more accessible rags were more popular. Ragtime gave way to jazz after World War I. The change was at first more in terminology than in the music, and many ragtime musicians began to call themselves jazz musicians.

"ragtime." The Concise Grove Dictionary of Music. Oxford University Press, Inc., 1994.
Answers.com 06 Dec. 2007. http://www.answers.com/topic/ragtime

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