...AND GOES ON...:

Leaving his own indelible mark on the 20th century, Joplin was an innovator whose deceptive, irregular rhythms and nuanced harmonic language helped define the trajectory of American music during a time of rapid change and flux. His short life (he died before age 50 in 1917) is almost a case study in the transformations of his time. He was born in northeast Texas just four years after Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, one of the first Black Americans born into the promise of freedom. A natural-born musician, Joplin absorbed a wide mix of influences, from the plantation melodies his parents played on the violin and banjo to the classical training he received from a generous local piano teacher. By the time Joplin was in his teens, in the 1880s, he was making a living as an itinerant musician, shaping a brand new American sound.

Joplin became the "King of Ragtime," a pioneer of a genre that permanently altered American culture. It exploded onto the scene in 1893, thanks in part to the World's Columbian Exposition, an expansive fair in Chicago visited by some 27 million people. While the fair itself was segregated, the saloons, cafés and brothels surrounding the fairgrounds resonated with the melodies of traveling ragtime musicians, including Joplin, who was there with his own band. The St. Louis Dispatch described this new national craze as "a veritable call of the wild, which mightily stirred the pulses of city-bred people."

Ragtime introduced mainstream America to the simple but radical trick of syncopation in rhythm - that displacement of the beat which causes a propulsion, a swinging of the hips, a feeling that anything might happen. Joplin's innovations in ragtime laid the foundation for much of 20th century American music: first blues, jazz and swing, then R&B and rock-and-roll. Nothing would ever be the same again.

Tweet   @brothersjudd