8
Wednesday, August 18, 1976
University Dally Kansan
Ragtime's lively rhythm reflects America's culture
By BOB GILES
Guest Writer
At sundown on most evenings during the
mea, 1896, the "sporting belt" of Sedalia,
Mo.
Gamblers, pumps, girls and the town's adventuresome males crowded into honkytoks and bawdyhouses like the Maple Leaf Club. The sounds of laughter that floated through the wooden sidewalks were mixed with the infection strains of a syncopted music.
The music was rattle, a rich new vein of culture that was being predefined for white America in the tenderion district of this town, which was railroad town in western Missouri.
LIVING IN Sedalia at that time were a number of gifted and sensitive black musicians. Among them was a markedly serious young man named Scott Joplin who, within a few years, to be known as the "Tiger," was an music and the man who shaped its course.
As a child in Tearkana, Tex., Joplin was surrounded by music. His father, Giles Joplin, taught him the blues and violin. His freeborn mother sang and played the banjo. Joplin left home in his early teens and became a wanderer troubadour, playing in disco clubs and, finally, in pop capella in 1894.
It was there that he published his first piano rags and fixed on sheet music a major
One of the hazards of Bicentennial worship is that it invites us to oversimplify complex historical patterns and to assign significance to events beyond their importance.
NVERTHELLESS, IT is reasonable to assume the most American all nave pilots
Its development between 1895-1915 is an important point in the history of America's music industry. In a book by William J. Schafer and Johannes Rielet argue that it no exaggeration to say that the modern music industry "rose to full fledge" on the tide of the ragtime revolution.
By the turn of the century, black music was thought to be limited to quaint folk songs—the spirituals, worksongs and plantation songs that were left over from the old slave culture and the heritage of suffering.
This was, in effect, the black man being seen through the white man's eyes as a passive, folky soul to be pitted because he was the victim of a hard fate.
RAGTIME CREATED a new and positive image of the black man, emphasizing his ability to conceive and score instrumental music. Ragtime composers served as collectors of the folk music that was in the style they wrote it to be played on the piano.
It is important in understanding the origin of recognition that it is based on knowledge.
Schafar and Riedel, in their book "The Art of Ragtime," explain, "The little
High school's 'innies' become life's 'outies'
Did you have a date to your high school prom? Were you ever elected cheerleader? Were you a star athlete in high school? If not, you have a good chance of being successful. Did you know the names of Kyssa, author of "There Is Life After High School?" (Little, Brown & Co., $7.95).
The high school "inmates." Keyes says, were "inmies" because of physical beauty, athletic ability or the money to buy the right color of socks. The things that got social rewards in high school amount to little in later life. Keyes says.
By CORA MARQUIS Staff Writer
Little social recognition comes from success on the high school literary magazine, the debating square or the high school display of intelligence. Keyes says.
KEYS HAS interviewed hundreds of famous Americans about their high school years. He thinks that those endeavors in later life that win recognition are often quite the opposite of what won recognition in high school. He even goes so far as to break down occupations according to the "innies" and "outies" of high school graduates.
Keyes, who admits to having been an "outie" breaks the sides down thus: "we (outs) give the innie all of the pro sports and its cheerleaders; we concede them the military, insurance agencies, PE departments, and heavy equipment. Politics and show business are divided zones, but we don't know what America means of communication. We write the speeches, publish the books, produce the movies, make the music, do the research, report for the papers, and comment on sports."
Keyes suggests that one reason the "outies" seem to succeed more often is that they were the adolescents who were denied peer recognition for their accomplishments in high school and, therefore, may have more drive and desire to climb.
Not all "innies" become shapeless housewives or insurance salesmen. Keyes must complete obstacle course once they have graduated from high school where their eggs have
been swelled by meaningless rewards. The irrelevant early triumphs tend to make them less able to adjust to later life, Keyes says.
KEYES SAYS that one of America's crueler hoaxes is the delusion perpetrated on high school "imimes" that life can go on for them with the same amount of recognition they received in high school for their bravery, sharply dressed or atheletic blessed.
melodies collected and integrated by black composers were primarily dance tunes; a piano raga is a keyboard dance suite, and the rhythmic impulse behind the music is one intended as accompaniment for dancing, for expressive physical motion. This fact, combined with the timeless giants's inception, has become blured by subsequent stereotypes about the music."
Within this century, high school has become perhaps the most universal experience of Americans. Keyes says. The experience will continue long after graduation, he adds. Those who don't attain high school glory settle for the next best thing: glory as an adult—always with the desperate *b*<sub>*pi*</sub> that former classmates will take note. Keyes
Keys notes that even President Gerald Ford, in his inaugural speech before Congress, had not yet shaken the high school fever of being an "outie."
Ford said, "I'm here to confess that in my first campaign or president—of my senior class at South High School—I headed the Progressive party ticket and I lost."
KEYES SAYS that once the impact of high school is clear, whether you were an "outie" or an "outfit", the memories must be binaural. With 101 ways to get high school off your back.
They include:
Ragtime was an important influence on the early development of American jazz, although the relationship of ragtime to jazz often is misunderstood.
The whole music industry borrowed and adapted the ragtime idea. Sousa's band played cakewalls and ragtime marches. She in the early songs identified with ragtime.
-Mass produce small gold megaphones and little gold footballs for sum machines.
Despite the differences, the emergence of jazz in its never-ending forms was heavily influenced by ragtime, part of a slow and confusing cultural evolution. Musicians
EACIE is a separate style; ragtime to be played note-for-note as written while jazz is music of improvisation based on the principle of theme-and-variations.
—Send a copy of your Ph.D. dissertation to me, and said you weren't college material.
—Make an obscene movie with your high school as the setting.
created music from what they knew; and in the days when jazz was developing a fascination of its own, much of it was inspired by or stolen from ragtime.
—Become a sportswriter. Ask em- barrasing questions.
—Become corresponding secretary of your class. Sell its mailing list to the Young Student Society.
—Arrange to be in the news at the time of your high school reunion. Don't attend.
-Eat in a high school cafeteria. Sit at any table you choose.
—Use that wallet-stained Trojan.
Most of the vitality and creativity of this American music form occurred in that pocket of the Midwest between St. Louis and Kansas City.
JOPLIN'S FIRST RAG, "Original Rags," was published by Carl Hoffman's music house in Kansas City. Hoffman rejected Joplin's second offering, "Maple Leaf Rag," which was published in 1899 by John Stark of Sedalia and became an instant hit.
James Scott, considered to be the second-ranking rattian composer, lived for awhile
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---
NOTICE
After Jopin and Scott, the list of rageful writers, black and white, is dominated by men who worked in Sedalia, St. Louis and New Orleans, who cultivated many pieces of enduring quality.
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One of the best-known composers of rags in Kansas City was E. Harry Kellun. In 1901, Kelly, the son of an Irish alderman, wrote a tune called "Pearceful Her唉," which played the Negro junior at Hoffman's music store. The song gained nationwide popularity.
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In the past 20 years, we have seen a rediscovery of rythm. It has been accepted as a valid and respectable American music form. There are enough musicians, old old, playing rythm, listening to it, studying it to insure that the music will endure.
Owens
FLOWER SHOP
KELLY ALSO wrote marches. One of them, published in 1908, was called "Kansas" and was dedicated to Frank Strong, chancellor of the University of Iowa with the course, that includes the vocal trio with the "Hock Clank Jayhawk" pepchant.
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