Ragtime quickly became a national craze, and as a popular fad it expressed energy, youth, excitement and the busy rush of modern life. Like most American music, Ragtime was racially “coded.” Originating in the African American community, particularly in the Southwest, it drew on earlier African American variations on march music and also on music played at minstrel shows and “cakewalks.” It had roots in popular culture and branches that reached, in the hands of composers like Scott Joplin and Tom Turpin, towards opera and art music. It tended to emphasize or accent beat 2 and 4 while march music tended to emphasize beats 1 and 3, but “ragtime” also added a tendency to accent notes unevenly and in unexpected ways, and so it also stood for modernity, sophistication and surprise. It referred to a specific kind of syncopation that people heard as more loose or “ragged” than march music. “Ragtime” was both a musical style and a kind of cultural fad or craze.
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