Ragtime's popularity was helped by its use by the many brass and wind bands of the time. Being an instrumental music, it adapted to the brass band nicely and was played by the many bands of the early 20th Century in all the small towns of America. It was John Philip Sousa who brought Ragtime to Europe with his famous band. John Philip Sousa (1854-1932) was a classically trained violinist (he played under the French composer and conductor Jacques Offenbach in Philadelphia in 1876) and later conductor of traveling musical shows. In 1880 he was hired to become band director for the U.S. Marine Band in Washington, D.C.
- Scott Kirby will return to the festival after several years to delight the GABBF audience with his lively jazz and ragtime piano performances. His repertoire includes works by such artists as Scott Joplin, John Philip Sousa and Jelly Roll Morton, to name a few, as well as original pieces.
- Sousa became one of the first American composers of operetta, beginning with 'The Smugglers' (1882) and culminating with the hit 'El Capitan' (1896). From 1880 to 1892 he headed the United States Marine Band, then formed the Sousa Band and went on triumphant concert tours of America and Europe. Sousa was an innovative musician.
- John Philip Sousa (1854-1932) was an American composer and band leader whose name is almost synonymous with marches.
The Allegheny City Ragtime Orchestra is a nine to eleven piece professional ensemble, founded in 2013 by Tom Roberts.
It draws its members from The Pittsburgh Symphony, The Pittsburgh Opera Orchestra, The Pittsburgh Ballet Orchestra, as well as several other professional orchestras.
The orchestra was created to restore the lost music of Pittsburgh composers from the ragtime era, roughly 1897–1917.
In addition to the composers of Pittsburgh, the repertoire is drawn from a vast collection of stock orchestrations comprising music from not only classic ragtime, but marches, waltzes, tangos and silent movie music.
Amongst the composers within our repertoire are:
Scott Joplin, Joseph Lamb, James Scott, Eubie Blake, Tom Turpin, Mel Kaufman, Clarence Williams, William Tyers, Ernesto Nazareth, and many, many others.
Performances
The ACRO has performed at the sixth annual 'The Americas in Concert' at Shadyside Academy's Hillman Auditorium, The Allegheny Riverstone Center for The Arts, The Allegheny City Society Summer Concert series, The Allegheny City Central Society Summer Concert Series as well as accompanying the Films of Buster Keaton and Fatty Arbuckle at The Hollywood Theater in Dormont.
What is 'ragtime' anyway?
Ragtime is a musical genre that enjoyed its peak of popularity between 1897 and 1918. Its main characteristic is its syncopated or ragged rhythm. It began as dance music in the red-light districts of African American communities throughout the mid and southwest. It is a modification of the march made popular by John Philip Sousa, with additional polyrhythms from Africa.
Ragtime fell out of favor as jazz claimed the public's attention after 1917, but there have been numerous revivals since the music has been re-discovered.
In the 1940s, many jazz bands began to include ragtime as part of their repertoire. In the ‘50s a wider variety of ragtime styles became available through the LP.
In 1971, Joshua Rifkin brought out a compilation of Scott Joplin's work which was nominated for a Grammy Award.
In 1973 The New England Conservatory Ragtime Ensemble recorded 'The Red Back Book' a compilation of period orchestration edited by conservatory president Gunther Schuller, which won a Grammy for Best Chamber Music Performance and was named Billboard's Top Classical Album for 1974.
Subsequently the motion picture 'The Sting' brought ragtime to a wider audience with it's soundtrack of Joplin tunes, The Entertainer becoming a Top-5 hit.
Booking info
If you'd like to schedule an Allegheny City Ragtime Orchestra performance, get in touch with Tom Roberts:
917.627.9594
tom@tomrobertspiano.com
Videos
One of the major tensions I find myself wrestling with when teaching lower level literature classes is the balance between contextual understanding and close reading. Context helps my students wrap their heads around material that may seem distant or foreign to their own experiences, but it also can interrupt or subordinate their attention to close reading. As a teacher, I want them to look closely at text and use that to interpret, but I am also of the belief that a text never exists in a vacuum. It can be hard to strike a balance between the two, and I discovered this a particular challenge when teaching E.L. Doctorow's historical revisionist novel, Ragtime. Ragtime is a 1975 novel that mixes historical figures such as J.P. Morgan, Harry Houdini, Emma Goldman, and many others, with fictional figures and events primarily in NYC to investigate key moments during the United States' Progressive Era.
The first time I taught this novel my students came up with a general type of response to the text when developing literary interpretations that went something like this: Through the use of historical narrative, Doctorow shows how 'X group' (African Americans, working class laborers, industrial powers, women) were treated/seen/acted in the Progressive Era. While this interpretation has some seeds of truth — Doctorow does look at historical and fictional figures across the racial and socioeconomic spectrum — these claims fall into the trap of linking specific narrative choices to generalized statements about the real world. As Jack Lynch says in his very helpful blog I use when teaching literary analysis papers: 'Never forget that books are books and, if you're in an English class, you're being asked to talk about them. Many books are unreliable guides to the real world outside the texts, and it's dangerous to talk about, say, Renaissance attitudes toward race based only on your reading of Othello. Talk about Othello.'
John Philip Sousa Ragtime Guitar
In other words, while it's important for students to engage in historical context to identify historical markers and allusions, it's also important that they don't see this book as a holistic representative of real world history. This is tricky to navigate, and I found that setting up Ragtime as a text that revises history can help them understand how Doctorow uses historical figures and events to make art. Doctorow calls this to mind in his own quote about rewriting history when he says, 'History is a nightmare we can best survive by rewriting it.' The publication date (1975) becomes revealing once students investigate what is happening during that time period in the United States: Watergate, Kent State and Jackson shootings, Nixon re-elected, EPA, just to name a few. I ask students why they think Doctorow, living in the mid-1970s might have had an impulse to rewrite another time in history.
One way I lay this foundation for students when we're moving towards interpretation and argumentation is to ask them to pay close attention to the diction of their argument. For example, instead of making a claim about the X (women, the Progressive Era, etc.) as a whole, I ask the students to think about what evidence in particular intrigues them about their topic. By asking them to move back into the book, I'm actually asking them to surrender context momentarily to consider the book as a work on its own terms — not a history but a revision of history. This isn't asking them to forget about the importance of setting and time period, but to look closely at how Doctorow crafts his characters to function within those parameters, not as representatives of it. Doctorow makes all up kinds of things in his book, and takes a different approach than Truman Capote, who I've written about in a previous post. As journalist Mel Gussow notes in his 1975 New York Times article about Doctorow's book, 'Ragtime as fictive nonfiction. It' s the reverse of Truman Capote.'
What follows are some resources I've cobbled together from various websites (yes, including Wikipedia) that helps set up historical context for students.
I've found that students know little of the Progressive Era, but they DO know John Green, and using Green's Crash Course is a good way to get them engaged in a time period that feels far removed from their present experience.
Before I send students off to read the first section of the book, we spend some time learning about and listening to ragtime music.
I ask students to pay attention to the book's pacing, as it echoes the syncopated rhythm of ragtime itself. At the end of the book, we revisit this idea and discuss why Doctorow may have chosen this as the book's title.
I also distribute a rather lengthy background handout which I've below before students read the first part of the novel. This way, if they run into a name or event they are unaware of, they can get some quick grounding to make sense of what's going on in the novel.
Historical Figures and Terms in Ragtime*
John Philip Sousa Biography
Anarchism – is a political philosophy that advocates stateless societies based on non-hierarchical free associations. Anarchism holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary, or harmful
Theodore Dreiser – American novelist and journalist of the naturalist school.
Egyptology – the study of ancient Egypt
Archduke Franz Ferdinand – Archduke of Austria whose assassination precipitated World War I.
Henry Ford and the Model T – was an American industrialist, the founder of the Ford Motor Company, and sponsor of the development of the assembly line technique of mass production. The Model T revolutionized transportation in the United States.
John Philip Sousa Invented Ragtime
Sigmund Freud – Austrian neurologist who became known as the founding father of psychoanalysis.
Henry Frick – American industrialist, financier, and art patron. Chairmen of Carnegie Steel Company.
Emma Goldman – famed anarchist known for her political activism, speeches, and writing.
Grand Narrative –A story that is supposed to be a comprehensive explanation of history and knowledge.
Harry Houdini – Hungarian-American illusionist, stunt performer, and escape artist.
Scott Joplin – African American composer and pianist who achieved fame for his ragtime Compositions.
Carl Jung – Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist whose theories include extraversion and introversion, archetypes, and the collective unconscious.
Lusitania – British ocean liner that was struck by torpedoes launched by German U-boats in 1915. Sinking of the boat hastened war involvement of Americans.
Mexican Revolution – as a major armed struggle that started in 1910, with an uprising led by Francisco I. Madero against longtime autocrat Porfirio Díaz, and lasted for the better part of a decade until around 1920. Over time the Revolution changed from a revolt against the established order to a multi-sided civil war with frequently shifting power struggles. This armed conflict is often categorized as the most important sociopolitical event in Mexico and one of the greatest upheavals of the 20th century, which saw important experimentation and reformation in social organization.
J.P. Morgan – was an American financier, banker, philanthropist and art collector who dominated corporate finance and industrial consolidation during his time
Evelyn Nesbit – Popular model and celebrity made famous nearly overnight by famed architect Stanford White.
Peary's expeditions – American explorer Robert Peary claimed he was the first to reach the North Pole.
Progressive Era – a period from the 1890s – 1920s that resulted from economic and social problems due to rapid industrialization introduced to America. Progressivism began as a social movement and grew into a political movement. The early progressives rejected Social Darwinism. In other words, they were people who believed that the problems society faced (poverty, violence, greed, racism, class warfare) could best be addressed by providing good education, a safe environment, and an efficient workplace.
Radicalism – the holding or following of radical or extreme views or principles, especially in Politics.
Amongst the composers within our repertoire are:
Scott Joplin, Joseph Lamb, James Scott, Eubie Blake, Tom Turpin, Mel Kaufman, Clarence Williams, William Tyers, Ernesto Nazareth, and many, many others.
Performances
The ACRO has performed at the sixth annual 'The Americas in Concert' at Shadyside Academy's Hillman Auditorium, The Allegheny Riverstone Center for The Arts, The Allegheny City Society Summer Concert series, The Allegheny City Central Society Summer Concert Series as well as accompanying the Films of Buster Keaton and Fatty Arbuckle at The Hollywood Theater in Dormont.
What is 'ragtime' anyway?
Ragtime is a musical genre that enjoyed its peak of popularity between 1897 and 1918. Its main characteristic is its syncopated or ragged rhythm. It began as dance music in the red-light districts of African American communities throughout the mid and southwest. It is a modification of the march made popular by John Philip Sousa, with additional polyrhythms from Africa.
Ragtime fell out of favor as jazz claimed the public's attention after 1917, but there have been numerous revivals since the music has been re-discovered.
In the 1940s, many jazz bands began to include ragtime as part of their repertoire. In the ‘50s a wider variety of ragtime styles became available through the LP.
In 1971, Joshua Rifkin brought out a compilation of Scott Joplin's work which was nominated for a Grammy Award.
In 1973 The New England Conservatory Ragtime Ensemble recorded 'The Red Back Book' a compilation of period orchestration edited by conservatory president Gunther Schuller, which won a Grammy for Best Chamber Music Performance and was named Billboard's Top Classical Album for 1974.
Subsequently the motion picture 'The Sting' brought ragtime to a wider audience with it's soundtrack of Joplin tunes, The Entertainer becoming a Top-5 hit.
Booking info
If you'd like to schedule an Allegheny City Ragtime Orchestra performance, get in touch with Tom Roberts:
917.627.9594
tom@tomrobertspiano.com
Videos
One of the major tensions I find myself wrestling with when teaching lower level literature classes is the balance between contextual understanding and close reading. Context helps my students wrap their heads around material that may seem distant or foreign to their own experiences, but it also can interrupt or subordinate their attention to close reading. As a teacher, I want them to look closely at text and use that to interpret, but I am also of the belief that a text never exists in a vacuum. It can be hard to strike a balance between the two, and I discovered this a particular challenge when teaching E.L. Doctorow's historical revisionist novel, Ragtime. Ragtime is a 1975 novel that mixes historical figures such as J.P. Morgan, Harry Houdini, Emma Goldman, and many others, with fictional figures and events primarily in NYC to investigate key moments during the United States' Progressive Era.
The first time I taught this novel my students came up with a general type of response to the text when developing literary interpretations that went something like this: Through the use of historical narrative, Doctorow shows how 'X group' (African Americans, working class laborers, industrial powers, women) were treated/seen/acted in the Progressive Era. While this interpretation has some seeds of truth — Doctorow does look at historical and fictional figures across the racial and socioeconomic spectrum — these claims fall into the trap of linking specific narrative choices to generalized statements about the real world. As Jack Lynch says in his very helpful blog I use when teaching literary analysis papers: 'Never forget that books are books and, if you're in an English class, you're being asked to talk about them. Many books are unreliable guides to the real world outside the texts, and it's dangerous to talk about, say, Renaissance attitudes toward race based only on your reading of Othello. Talk about Othello.'
John Philip Sousa Ragtime Guitar
In other words, while it's important for students to engage in historical context to identify historical markers and allusions, it's also important that they don't see this book as a holistic representative of real world history. This is tricky to navigate, and I found that setting up Ragtime as a text that revises history can help them understand how Doctorow uses historical figures and events to make art. Doctorow calls this to mind in his own quote about rewriting history when he says, 'History is a nightmare we can best survive by rewriting it.' The publication date (1975) becomes revealing once students investigate what is happening during that time period in the United States: Watergate, Kent State and Jackson shootings, Nixon re-elected, EPA, just to name a few. I ask students why they think Doctorow, living in the mid-1970s might have had an impulse to rewrite another time in history.
One way I lay this foundation for students when we're moving towards interpretation and argumentation is to ask them to pay close attention to the diction of their argument. For example, instead of making a claim about the X (women, the Progressive Era, etc.) as a whole, I ask the students to think about what evidence in particular intrigues them about their topic. By asking them to move back into the book, I'm actually asking them to surrender context momentarily to consider the book as a work on its own terms — not a history but a revision of history. This isn't asking them to forget about the importance of setting and time period, but to look closely at how Doctorow crafts his characters to function within those parameters, not as representatives of it. Doctorow makes all up kinds of things in his book, and takes a different approach than Truman Capote, who I've written about in a previous post. As journalist Mel Gussow notes in his 1975 New York Times article about Doctorow's book, 'Ragtime as fictive nonfiction. It' s the reverse of Truman Capote.'
What follows are some resources I've cobbled together from various websites (yes, including Wikipedia) that helps set up historical context for students.
I've found that students know little of the Progressive Era, but they DO know John Green, and using Green's Crash Course is a good way to get them engaged in a time period that feels far removed from their present experience.
Before I send students off to read the first section of the book, we spend some time learning about and listening to ragtime music.
I ask students to pay attention to the book's pacing, as it echoes the syncopated rhythm of ragtime itself. At the end of the book, we revisit this idea and discuss why Doctorow may have chosen this as the book's title.
I also distribute a rather lengthy background handout which I've below before students read the first part of the novel. This way, if they run into a name or event they are unaware of, they can get some quick grounding to make sense of what's going on in the novel.
Historical Figures and Terms in Ragtime*
John Philip Sousa Biography
Anarchism – is a political philosophy that advocates stateless societies based on non-hierarchical free associations. Anarchism holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary, or harmful
Theodore Dreiser – American novelist and journalist of the naturalist school.
Egyptology – the study of ancient Egypt
Archduke Franz Ferdinand – Archduke of Austria whose assassination precipitated World War I.
Henry Ford and the Model T – was an American industrialist, the founder of the Ford Motor Company, and sponsor of the development of the assembly line technique of mass production. The Model T revolutionized transportation in the United States.
John Philip Sousa Invented Ragtime
Sigmund Freud – Austrian neurologist who became known as the founding father of psychoanalysis.
Henry Frick – American industrialist, financier, and art patron. Chairmen of Carnegie Steel Company.
Emma Goldman – famed anarchist known for her political activism, speeches, and writing.
Grand Narrative –A story that is supposed to be a comprehensive explanation of history and knowledge.
Harry Houdini – Hungarian-American illusionist, stunt performer, and escape artist.
Scott Joplin – African American composer and pianist who achieved fame for his ragtime Compositions.
Carl Jung – Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist whose theories include extraversion and introversion, archetypes, and the collective unconscious.
Lusitania – British ocean liner that was struck by torpedoes launched by German U-boats in 1915. Sinking of the boat hastened war involvement of Americans.
Mexican Revolution – as a major armed struggle that started in 1910, with an uprising led by Francisco I. Madero against longtime autocrat Porfirio Díaz, and lasted for the better part of a decade until around 1920. Over time the Revolution changed from a revolt against the established order to a multi-sided civil war with frequently shifting power struggles. This armed conflict is often categorized as the most important sociopolitical event in Mexico and one of the greatest upheavals of the 20th century, which saw important experimentation and reformation in social organization.
J.P. Morgan – was an American financier, banker, philanthropist and art collector who dominated corporate finance and industrial consolidation during his time
Evelyn Nesbit – Popular model and celebrity made famous nearly overnight by famed architect Stanford White.
Peary's expeditions – American explorer Robert Peary claimed he was the first to reach the North Pole.
Progressive Era – a period from the 1890s – 1920s that resulted from economic and social problems due to rapid industrialization introduced to America. Progressivism began as a social movement and grew into a political movement. The early progressives rejected Social Darwinism. In other words, they were people who believed that the problems society faced (poverty, violence, greed, racism, class warfare) could best be addressed by providing good education, a safe environment, and an efficient workplace.
Radicalism – the holding or following of radical or extreme views or principles, especially in Politics.
Ragtime – a musical genre that enjoyed its peak popularity between 1897 and 1918. Its main characteristic trait is its syncopated, or 'ragged,' rhythm. It began as dance music in the red-light districts of African American communities in St. Louis and New Orleans years before being published as popular sheet music for piano. Ernest Hogan was an innovator and key pioneer who helped develop the musical genre, and is credited with coining the term ragtime. Ragtime was also a modification of the march made popular by John Philip Sousa, with additional polyrhythms coming from African music. The ragtime composer Scott Joplin became famous through the publication in 1899 of the 'Maple Leaf Rag' and a string of ragtime hits such as 'The Entertainer' that followed, although he was later forgotten by all but a small, dedicated community of ragtime aficionados until the major ragtime revival in the early 1970s. For at least 12 years after its publication, the 'Maple Leaf Rag' heavily influenced subsequent ragtime composers with its melody lines, harmonic progressions or metric patterns.
Revisionism – Advocacy of the revision of an accepted, usually long-standing view, theory, or doctrine, especially a revision of historical events and movements.
Jacob Riis – A Danish-born police reporter with a knack of publicity and an abiding Christian faith, Jacob Riis won international recognition for his 1890 bestseller, 'How the Other Half Lives,' which exposed the desperate and squalid conditions of New York City's tenement slums and gave momentum to a sanitary reform movement that started in the 1840s and culminated in New York State's landmark Tenement House Act of 1901.
Theodore Roosevelt – President from 1901-1909
Socialism – the theory of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution of capital in the community as a whole.
William Howard Taft – President from 1909-1913
Harry K. Thaw – Son of Pittsburgh coal and railroad baron William Thaw, Sr. Husband of Evelyn Nesbit and murderer of Stanford White.
Booker T. Washington – African-American author, educator, orator, and advisor to presidents of the United States.
Stanford White – American architect. Among his more important commissions in New York City were the Madison Square Garden (1891), the Washington Memorial Arch (1891), the New York Herald Building (1892), and the Madison Square Presbyterian Church (1906). He had a love affair with Evelyn Nesbit and was shot to death by her husband.
Emiliano Zapata – Mexican revolutionary
Tuba John Philip Sousa
Zapatista – Mexican armed insurgent groups that began during the Mexican Revolution.
Who Is John Philip Sousa
*Much of this information is taken from wikipedia
Lastly, this is one of those texts where there are many online teaching guides. I always find it helpful to see how others frame a text I'm teaching and have used this particular resource to come up with some in class discussion questions: Random House Guide to Teaching Ragtime
John Philip Sousa Ragtime Piano
Overall, Ragtime is a fun and complex book to teach. It is a great way to introduce students to revisionist narratives and to learn some history along the way. It's a fast read, but one that brings up so many interesting layers of conversation that it's easy to run out of time in class because of lively conversation, which is really what lit classes are all about.
