Ragtime originated as part of the African American music scene in the late 19th century and descended from the jigs and march music played by African American bands, referred to as “jig piano” or “piano thumping”

The term “ragtime” was used among players, although it did not appear in print until the end of the century. Literally, the word meant “rag the time” or syncopate the rhythm.

Ragtime music originated on the piano. The music is fast and syncopated (“ragged”), with the right hand doing all the crazy rhythms and the left hand played steadily. In ragtime, the left hand usually plays a bass note on beat 1 and 3, with a chord on beat 2 and 4.

Ragtime harmonic patterns are fairly simple, doing a lot of tonic-dominant movement. For example, if you were in the key of C, you would be playing mainly C and G chords.

Unlike some jazz, the way ragtime music was written on the page was exactly how it should be played – without embellishment or modification. Ragtime is also very technically demanding to play – if you’ve attempted to play Joplin’s Maple Leaf Rag, you will understand. The idea was to play with machine-like precision.

 

Ragtime stringband music is a subset of stringband music and ragtime music. It was (and is) played by white and black musicians. Ragtime was played on pianos and big bands. A less popular subset of the genre was taken by smaller bands with fiddles, banjos and guitars.

While there is a great deal written about ragtime music and stringband music, there is very little written on stringband ragtime music.

Back in 2019, our columnist Roland Sturm wrote an article called REDISCOVERING RAGTIME. Check it out.

Before that, back in 2006, our late friend Steve Parker (edited by Alan Davis) wrote a book RAGTIME for Fiddle and Mandolin which contains transcriptions on 125 tunes from string and piano sources. He includes drawings and photos and short descriptions of some of the purveyors of the music like Martin, Bogan and Armstrong, Kenny Hall, Ralph Blizzard and others.

References:
Ragtime
Folk ragtime