ragtime
...y were able to play music as a full time job and live comfortably just from the tips they made at clubs. It was in these clubs that many Ragtime songs became big hits. The people would hear them, love them, and remember them. By living on their tips, they did not even have the need to make money from publishings. Many times the best Ragtime was not even played for the public’s ear, but rather it took place behind locked doors. Musicians got together, in the early hours of the morning, after the clubs had closed, and played the Ragtime tunes all night. Ragtime had become a popular music form for those who lived the plantation life. The plantation owners would have parties called Cake Walks in which they would get dressed up in their best clothes and dance to Ragtime pieces. They would then choose a winner of the dance competition and that person would properly ‘take the cake’. This enjoyable event or game became so popular that it not only spread throughout the south, but also even reached over into Europe, and they had a good dose of Ragtime while cake walking. Ragtime was a very danceable music as it was structured around African rhythms. African rhythms were very complex and composers of Ragtime incorporated them into their music that made people start tapping their feet and moving to the beat. A loudness, which it seemed to give, was an influence for many styles of jazz to emerge in the near future. Syncopation became a very integral part of what defined the basic structure Ragtime. Syncopation is the shift of an accent in the music from a strong beat to a weak beat. Vice Versa is also true, as a strong beat will be made weak in syncopation. When syncopated beats were first starting to infiltrate the music industry, it was not a sound that the ear was necessarily accustomed to. Things that do not sound exactly right the first time to a music publisher are usually not excepted. This was especially evident with syncopation because it was...