Staff photo by Connor Cummiskey Meghan Moore presented a brief history of ragtime music to members of CASTLE Lifelong Learning.

NEW ULM — Ahead of viewing “Ragtime, the Musical” CASTLE members were briefed on the history of the music and musical Wednesday.

At the New Ulm Community Center, CASTLE (Community and Seniors Together Learning Environment) Lifelong Learning brought in a speaker to discuss the history of one of the first American music genres.

“The feature that gives ragtime its name is the ragged beat, or the syncopation,” presenter Meghan Moore said.

Syncopation is a shifting in the accent of musical beats. Normally unaccented beats become emphasized.

During the late 19th century, most music beats were described with the suffix of time, like march-time or waltz-time, according to the Library of Congress website.

As an example, Moore used Scott Joplin’s “Maple Leaf Rag.” Dubbed King of Ragtime, Joplin’s “Maple Leaf Rag” is an icon of the genre.

“You can hear the beat, one, two, three, four. He (Joplin) is not on it, he is leaning in between it and that is that syncopation,” Moore said. “That ragged beat is what makes you get up and dance. That is what we still use it in almost every form of American music today.”

Ragtime ruled from its apocryphal beginnings in 1895 until it was supplanted by swing jazz in 1918.

The genre was influenced by contemporary marching music, African American music, and cake walk and banjo playing styles.

At the time, prerecorded music was fairly new and low quality. It was recorded on wax cylinders that could not even pick up drums.

Player pianos, also called pianolas, worked well for playing music without a musician. They recorded music by perforating paper while playing, then played it when that paper was plugged into the rolls of the machine.

“It could circumvent the inferior recording technology by just recreating the live music,” Moore said. “So that was a good way people could get their music, and it is part of the reason that ragtime is almost exclusively on the piano.”

In 1917 and beyond, music began to move toward a whole-band sound as ragtime evolved into jazz music played by artists like Louis Armstrong.

“It is only a tiny hop, skip and a jump to get from Armstrong to Sam Hook to Elvis Presley to The Supremes to The Beatles to Michael Jackson to Beyonce,” Moore said. “It is all a progression, and it all started with the first American music, with ragtime.”

Connor Cummiskey can be emailed at ccummiskey@nujournal.com.