Music Podcast

The first episode of the podcast "Music on the Hill" discusses the influence of ragtime music in Missouri. Ragtime played a significant role in the development of music, especially in the early 1900s. Sedalia, Missouri, was a crucial center for ragtime due to its railroad town status and the presence of venues like brothels and saloons where ragtime was performed. The turning point for the genre came at the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago, where Scott Joplin, a key figure in ragtime, discovered and embraced the style. Joplin moved to Sedalia and became known as the King of Ragtime, releasing popular songs like the Maple Leaf Rag. Missouri's abundance of performance spaces and its frequent influx of visitors contributed to the genre's growth and popularity. Ragtime's influence extended to jazz and blues, shaping modern music. Good afternoon, everybody, and welcome to the first episode of this podcast, Music on the Hill. I'm your host, Peyton Hodges, and I'd like to wish you all a happy Tuesday. Today we're going to be discussing ragtime in Missouri, and the crazy thing about music is we've developed a lot from when music first started to come around, back in the medieval ages when there was Gregorian chant. It doesn't sound much like music does today. It was definitely more ancient, you could say, but it didn't have a whole lot of texture to it. It was pretty simple, simple melodic lines. There wasn't a whole lot going into it, but we've developed a lot of the music we have today with the many artists that we have. Think of the Nicki Minaj's, the Taylor Swift's of the world. Music's done a lot over the past hundreds of years, and especially the past hundred years. I mean, even in the early 1900s, music was not what it is today. It's developed a lot. I think a lot of that has to do with ragtime. It's kind of an overlooked genre. It's not something a lot of people talk about, but it had a heavy influence on where we are today. The interesting thing about it is, is that not just ragtime, but Missouri ragtime. Missouri had a heavy influence on the development of ragtime, and there's reasons for that. It wasn't just that Missouri was a great center for music, it's that there was an environment that allowed ragtime to thrive and really set off the genre. The main focus point today is going to be Sedalia, Missouri. Sedalia was a railroad town in the late 1800s and early 1900s, and they had a lot of visitors coming through. Missouri, especially in St. Louis is a good example, is considered the gateway to the West. Well, the railroads in Sedalia were used very often by tourists, travelers, people coming through, and those people coming through were able to hear the ragtime genre in here develop. Interestingly enough, there were brothels, bars, saloons, things of that nature, where piano ragtime was played a lot, and that's really where the ragtime genre started to take root and really start to grow. It wasn't always that popular, and it wasn't always that well known. Honestly, the biggest turning point actually came in the 1893 World's Fair. This happened in Chicago, and this was when ragtime was really introduced on the grand stage, and that's when its popularity really started to take off. Many people came that year and were able to hear this new genre and were very excited about it. Ragtime was a dance genre, and it was liked by a lot of people that heard it. The interesting thing about it is it wasn't just how many people heard it, it's who heard it, and the main person was Scott Joplin. Scott Joplin was a musician, I should say, most of his life. He wasn't always playing professionally, but he was always trying to learn more about it, and he learned from his father, who was also a musician. Well, Joplin heard the ragtime being played at the World's Fair, and that's when he started to really catch on to the fad that was really starting to take off. Well, Joplin, as I said, was a musician, and he, after the World's Fair, he moved, he was originally from Texas, he moved to Sedalia, Missouri, to this little railroad town, and he began playing. There was a school there, a music school for African Americans, and Joplin began teaching and as well as learning a little bit in the school, learning composing and how to articulate different music things on paper, and so that way it could be recorded down. Joplin played in saloons and bars alike, and that's really when he started to develop his style and his popularity, actually. In 1899, I should say, Joplin released the Maple Leaf Rag, which really was a turning point for the genre. The Maple Leaf Rag was really popular among not only ragtime listeners, but music listeners in general, and it sold quite a few copies. It was a pivotal, pivotal song in the ragtime genre, because it really started to show where the ragtime genre could go. The Maple Leaf Rag was very creative, and it used different sounds to tie it back to the African American early culture, which was a big part of what ragtime was. Joplin would eventually go on to sell over a million copies of the Maple Leaf Rag, and he would also release other popular songs. His influence on the style would earn him the nickname the King of Ragtime, and this really shows how influential he was. What influenced Scott Joplin, though? Why did he go to Sedalia, Missouri? Why was Missouri so good for the ragtime genre? The two biggest reasons lie in the fact that, one, there was a lot of places for ragtime to be played. As I said earlier, the bars, the saloons, great places for people to play music, and many people liked going there because it was very entertaining. It was a very entertaining style as well. This really set it off is that there were many travelers, tourists coming through that were able to hear this new style and bring this back to, I guess, wherever they were from. This really spread this new style of music and really helped sell its popularity. The second biggest reason being that the bars and saloons helped the volume of the ragtime style and how often it was able to be played. In the same way that they helped many people hear the music, they also helped artists that were performing ragtime really work on their craft and develop new styles and new ways of playing it. This was what really attracted Joplin to Sedalia and why he came there to learn more about music and also begin to play his music. Scott Joplin was a pioneer in the ragtime style, and Missouri really helped do that for him. Missouri was big for the ragtime genre, and it was a big reason that this style was so influential. It's sad that it's overlooked because it played such a big role in music as we know today. I want to say thank you to all of you for coming today. I really wish we had more time, but I'm glad you were able to hear the opening episode. It was fun. I hope you all learned something. I hope you all learned about how helpful that Missouri was for the ragtime genre and for Scott Joplin and the role that he played in pioneering a style that just had so much influence. It influenced the jazz styles, the blues styles, and really played a role in moving music from... I won't say all the way from Gregorian chant because they were a little far apart, but it moved music to the point we know today. All right. I'll let you guys go, but I just want to say thank you again for listening to the open episode. I can't wait for the second episode because I have something great cooked up for you all. Thank you.