Topic 108: Our Rag-time Age

Carol:

My Rag-Time Age: 1973

In American culture, a generation’s identity  is often marked by its music fads, and the generation gap tends to heat up more around the clash of musical taste than from political ideology. My introduction to rock-and-roll in the late 1950’s came from my brother’s bedroom (how many times can you actually play “Rock Around the Clock” in one day without losing your sanity?) and the television show American Bandstand.  I vaguely remember that “Elvis the Pelvis” created a big stir on the Ed Sullivan Show amid concern that his music was a “virulent poison” on the morals of 1950’s youth.  In the early 1960’s, the Beatles were controversial enough that my mother banned me from buying their records. 

By 1973, I was married and living in Connecticut while my husband finished his last year of law school. Vietnam was cooling down,  Watergate was heating up, in a time of increasing distrust of government  I didn’t have the money to buy music , so I mostly listened to the radio or went to cheap concerts. By and large, my musical tastes were shaped then by the soundtracks I heard at the movies, which seemed to offer escapist relief from the darkening political climate.  Top films that year ranged from the romantic (Day for Night, The Way We Were) to the frenetic (Magnum Force, Live and Let Die).  But one of the highest earners for the year and winner of the Academy Award for Best Film was a Paul Newman-Robert Redford re-match called The Sting (source: Wikipedia 1973 in film).
 

So, in 1973 I was introduced to the beat of rag-time and the music of Scott Joplin through the strangely circuitous vehicle of popular film. Composer Marvin Hamlisch adapted Scott Joplin’s 1903 rag-time song “The Entertainer” as the theme song for a 1973 movie about two 1930’s con-men, a generation after rag-time had lost its popularity. Hamlisch’s musical score and adaptation of the Joplin piece earned him an academy award, and “The Entertainer” not only hit the pop music charts, but is listed as #48 on the top 100 songs of 1974. I never bought the soundtrack, but I did buy the sheet music which is in my piano bench right now.

 I imagine most people my age learned about rag-time music and Scott Joplin in 1973. We probably learned about the Rag-time Age from E. L. Doctorow’s 1975 novel that places its main characters in the physical and geographical heyday of rag-time, the period in New York City between 1900 and 1917 where Joplin was living and writing at the time. 

The best way to learn about rag-time is to listen to the music. Or to play it on the piano. It is peppy, loose, jumps around, and calls for agility on the piano.  I call it “happy fingers music” because it takes a light and quick touch along with speed. I can’t imagine trying to play rag-time when I’m in a bad mood. And when I’m in my best mood and all practiced-up on Czerny, I can manage to play “The Entertainer” at about half speed. 
 

As popular as rag-time was, it too evoked a generational controversy, arousing the ire of both music and moral purists:

The counters of the music stores are loaded with this virulent poison which in the form of a malarious epidemic, is finding its way into the homes and brains of the youth to such an extent as to arouse one's suspicions of their sanity. (Library of Congress Performing Arts Encyclopedia)

Sources:
History of Ragtime. Performing Arts Encyclopedia of the Library of Congress. http://lcweb2.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/loc.natlib.ihas.200035811/default.html
Top 100 Hits of 1974 http://www.musicoutfitters.com/topsongs/1974.htm
Wikipedia: 1973 in film http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_in_film

Megan:

Our "Rag-Time" Age?

As we have progressed – intellectually, economically, and socially – we have paid a price for that progress. That price has been a change in our thoughts, our customs, and our traditions; and that change has been definitely toward the ragtime. – Editorial in The Optimist

Occasionally we pull a topic that seems timeless, like "Outgrown Opinions". Other times, a topic seems prescient, as with "The Triumph of the Machine." And then we pull a topic like today’s, which seems to firmly set itself in a specific time (ie 1915, when the book of topics was first published). According to Merriam-Webster and Wikipedia,  rag-time is a genre of music characterized by syncopated, or ragged rhythm, which was most popular between 1897-1918.  Rag-time originated among African-American bands and gained popularity in greater American culture through a series of popular (and occasionally racist) songs, published in “sheet music rags.”

In the early 1920’s, Jazz replaced rag-time in mainstream popularity, but rag-time has experienced several revivals—particularly in the early 1940’s, 50’s and 70’s. I’m not really a music person. I like certain songs, but I have no particular appreciation for music as an art, despite years of piano lessons. Instead, I’m more curious about whether this topic can be interpreted as a metaphor, and if that metaphor can still be applied nearly 100 years later.

In preparing for this essay, I found a (poorly written) editorial in The Optimist, which is the college newspaper of Abilene Christian University in Texas.  This editorial used our  topic as its title, and it is not beyond the realm of possibility that The Optimist’s journalism classes used our same textbook.  However, it is the only article I could find online that didn’t directly refer to either our book or our website.

Although rag-time is not exactly defined within the article, whomever wrote it did not view his “Rag-time Age” positively.  The introduction includes this assertion:  “More and more we have grown to tolerate things that were considered unbearable by bygone generations.” The closest the author comes to defining his rag-time metaphor is through allusions to speed and living “in a dizzy fashion.” Many of his complaints are similar in tone to statements I have made or thought:

We pick up any passing fad and drop it for the next one. Altogether too many of us take up any trend of opinion and then change it for the next one we meet (…) 

We live in a wasteful manner. Everywhere about us there is a waste that, seriously considered, is alarming to say the least. We waste our natural resources and squandor our wealth, and we make few provisions for our posterity.

Setting aside the irony of a newspaper called The Optimist publishing such doom and gloom, this article seems like a typical college newspaper editorial  (preachy and self-important). If we accept the application of the word rag-time to mean dizzy and out-of-control, then this anonymous editorial might easily have been published last month.  

In fact, it was published on January 19, 1939, around the time Rag-time was experiencing its first revival. As I said before, I’m not a big music person and I have a hard time reconciling Scott Joplin’s “The Entertainer” (as played by my mother when I was growing up) with the apocalyptic vision portrayed by The Optimist. But then, music has changed  alot since 1915 (and 1939), and perhaps if the author had watched The Grammy’s last week, and witnessed the dizzy and out-of-control tempo of contemporary dance hits, he might instead have titled his essay “Our Gaga Age.”

You can click on this image to make it larger

Sources:
Scanned original editorial can be found here: http://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth91648/m1/2/zoom/
Website for The Optimist in its modern incarnation can be found here: http://www.acuoptimist.com/

Wikipedia article on Ragtime: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ragtime