Editing Ragtime (section)

==Historical context==
Ragtime originated in African American music in the late 19th century and descended from the jigs and [[March (music)|march music]] played by African American bands, referred to as "jig piano" or "piano thumping".<ref name="vdm">{{cite book |last1=Van der Merwe |first1=Peter |title=Origins of the Popular Style: The Antecedents of Twentieth-Century Popular Music |date=1989 |publisher=Clarendon Press |location=Oxford |isbn=0-19-316121-4 |page=[https://archive.org/details/originsofpopular0000vand/page/63 63] |url=https://archive.org/details/originsofpopular0000vand/page/63 }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal|title=From Piano Thumping to the Concert Stage: The Rise of Ragtime|journal=Music Educators Journal |date=April 1973 |volume=59|issue=8|pages=53–56 |jstor=3394278|doi=10.2307/3394278|s2cid=221056114 }}</ref>

By the start of the 20th century, it became widely popular throughout North America and was listened and danced to, performed, and written by people of many different subcultures. A distinctly American musical style, ragtime may be considered a synthesis of African syncopation and European classical music, especially the marches made popular by John Philip Sousa.

Some early piano rags were classified as "jig", "rag", and "coon songs". These labels were sometimes used interchangeably in the mid-1890s, 1900s, and 1910s.<ref name="vdm"/> Ragtime was also preceded by its close relative the [[cakewalk]]. In 1895, black entertainer [[Ernest Hogan]] released the earliest ragtime composition, called "[[La Pas Ma La]]". The following year he released another composition called "All Coons Look Alike to Me", which eventually sold a million copies.<ref name="lw1">{{cite book |last1=White |first1=Loring |title=Ragging it: getting ragtime into history (and some history into ragtime) |date=2005 |publisher=iUniverse |isbn=0-595-34042-3 |page=99}}</ref>

[[Tom Fletcher (vaudeville)|Tom Fletcher]], a vaudeville entertainer and the author of ''100 Years of the Negro in Show Business'', has stated that "Hogan was the first to put on paper the kind of rhythm that was being played by non-reading musicians."<ref name="lw2">''Ragging It'', p.100.</ref> While the success of "All Coons Look Alike to Me"  helped popularize the country to ragtime rhythms, its use of racial slurs created a number of derogatory imitation tunes, known as "[[coon song]]s" because of their use of [[Racism|racist]] and [[Stereotype|stereotypical]] images of black people. In Hogan's later years, he admitted shame and a sense of "race betrayal" from the song, while also expressing pride in helping bring ragtime to a larger audience.<ref>{{cite book|title=Dvorak to Duke Ellington: A Conductor Explores America's Music and Its African American Roots|first=Maurice|last=Peress|author-link=Maurice Peress |publisher=Oxford University Press |date=2003|page=39}}</ref>

[[File:Maple Leaf Rag 1st ed 2.jpg|thumb|[[Sheet music]] of Joplin's 1899 "[[Maple Leaf Rag]]"]]

The emergence of mature ragtime is usually dated to 1897, the year in which several important early rags were published. "Harlem Rag" by [[Tom Turpin]] and "Mississippi Rag" by [[William Krell]] were both release that year. In 1899, Scott Joplin's "[[Maple Leaf Rag]]" was published and became a great hit and demonstrated more depth and sophistication than earlier ragtime.

Ragtime was one of the main influences on the early development of jazz (along with the [[blues]]). Some artists, such as [[Jelly Roll Morton]], were present and performed both ragtime and jazz styles during the period the two styles overlapped. He also incorporated the [[Spanish tinge]] in his performances, which gave a [[contradanza|habanera]] or [[Tango music|tango]] rhythm to his music.<ref>Garrett 2004, p. 94.</ref> Jazz largely surpassed ragtime in mainstream popularity in the early 1920s, although ragtime compositions continue to be written up to the present, and periodic revivals of popular interest in ragtime occurred in the 1950s and the 1970s.

[[File:Chase & Baker player piano, Buffalo, NY, circa 1885.JPG|thumb|The keys of this [[player piano]] from 1885 are controlled by musical information in the center [[piano roll]].]]

The heyday of ragtime occurred before sound recording was widely available. Like European classical music, [[classical ragtime]] has primarily been a written tradition distributed though sheet music. But sheet music sales ultimately depended on the skill of amateur pianists, which limited classical ragtime's complexity and proliferation. A [[folk ragtime]] tradition also existed before and during the period of classical ragtime (a designation largely created by Scott Joplin's publisher [[John Stillwell Stark]]), manifesting itself mostly through string bands, banjo and mandolin clubs (which experienced a burst of popularity during the early 20th century) and the like. Ragtime was also distributed via [[piano roll]]s for mechanical [[player piano]]s. While the traditional rag was fading in popularity, a genre called [[novelty piano]] (or novelty ragtime) emerged that took advantage of new advances in piano roll technology and the [[phonograph record]] to permit a more complex, pyrotechnic, performance-oriented style of rag to be heard. Chief among the novelty rag composers is [[Zez Confrey]], whose "Kitten on the Keys" popularized the style in 1921.

Ragtime also served as the roots for [[stride piano]], a more improvisational piano style popular in the 1920s and 1930s. Elements of ragtime found their way into much of the American popular music of the early 20th century. It also played a central role in the development of the musical style later referred to as [[Piedmont blues]]; indeed, much of the music played by such artists of the style as [[Reverend Gary Davis]], [[Blind Boy Fuller]], [[Elizabeth Cotten]], and [[Etta Baker]] could be referred to as "ragtime guitar."<ref>Bastin, Bruce. "Truckin' My Blues Away: East Coast Piedmont Styles" in ''Nothing But the Blues: The Music and the Musicians''. Ed. Lawrence Cohn. New York: Abbeville Press, 1993.</ref>

Although most ragtime was composed for piano, transcriptions for other instruments and ensembles are common, notably including [[Gunther Schuller]]'s arrangements of Joplin's rags. Ragtime guitar continued to be popular into the 1930s, usually in the form of songs accompanied by skilled guitar work. Numerous records emanated from several labels, performed by [[Blind Blake]], [[Blind Boy Fuller]], [[Blind Lemon Jefferson]], and others. Occasionally, ragtime was scored for ensembles (particularly dance bands and [[brass band]]s) similar to those of [[James Reese Europe]] or as songs like those written by [[Irving Berlin]]. Joplin had long-standing ambitions of synthesizing the worlds of ragtime and [[opera]], to which end the opera ''[[Treemonisha]]'' was written. However, its first performance, poorly staged with Joplin accompanying on the piano, was "disastrous" and was never performed again in Joplin's lifetime.<ref name="NYModern">{{cite book |last1=Scott |first1=William B. |last2=Rutkoff |first2=Peter M. |title=New York Modern: The Arts and the City |date=2001 |publisher=Johns Hopkins University Press |page=37}}</ref> The score was lost for decades, then rediscovered in 1970, and a fully orchestrated and staged performance took place in 1972.<ref name=Peterson1993>{{cite book |title=A century of musicals in black and white |last=Peterson |first=Bernard L. |year=1993 |publisher=Greenwood Press |location=Westport, Connecticut |isbn=0-313-26657-3 |page=[https://archive.org/details/centuryofmusical0000pete/page/357 357] |url=https://archive.org/details/centuryofmusical0000pete |url-access=registration |access-date=2009-03-20}}</ref> An earlier opera by Joplin, ''A Guest of Honor'', has been lost.<ref name=classicalnet>{{cite web |url=http://www.classical.net/music/comp.lst/joplin.php|title=Classical Net|website=Classical.net|access-date=2009-03-20}}</ref>