The Incredible Story of America's First Pop Star

this video was sponsored by Skillshare head on over to sk l dot s h / polyphonic 21 to get two months free and start learning today this might be one of the most recognizable piano lines of the 20th century but it can mean any number of things to any number of people it's from a song called the Entertainer by Scott chopped to some people it could be a Western saloon to others a great caper to some an ice cream truck and to many a silent movie but with all these different connections much of the entertainers historical context is forgotten and so what many people don't realize is that the Entertainer is one of the finest achievements by one of the greatest musicians in American history people don't realize it's part of a tragic story of a visionary artist who died young and penniless and was buried in an unmarked grave and many people don't realize just how this artists work still influences the social and musical landscapes of America a century after his death let's take a closer look Scott Joplin was known as the king of ragtime at the turn of the century he might have been the biggest musician in America his 1899 song Nathan Leaf Rag is said to be the first piece of instrumental music to sell over a million copies in the composer's lifetime Joplin assured in an era of ragtime and helped start the first true popular music craze in American history all this despite being black and born in the American South just four years after the end of the Civil War so what exactly is ragtime well to understand that we should first look at the genres predecessors before Joplin came along one of the most popular songwriters in America was John Philip Sousa Sousa was a military band leader who wrote marches for military bands to parade to perhaps his most famous is the Stars and Stripes forever because these marches were made for people to walk to they were usually in 2/4 or 4/4 time with clear notes played on the beat but almost no ragtime music is played right on the beat and that's because of another aspect of rag times influenced African folk music African folk musics like many folk musics are built for dance and playing musics trade often just doesn't lend itself to dancing so instead these folk musics use a tool known as syncopation syncopation is putting stress on a beat that usually won't be stressed or missing beats where you'd expect stress the result is something less predictable and something that makes you want to move syncopation is the foundation of all kinds of music to this day and ragtime brought syncopation in to American popular music just look at the sheet music of Maple Leaf Rag you can actually see the syncopation there on the page and that's what gives the song the off kilter jive that makes you want to walk around like a silent movie star of course there's one other big influence on ragtime and I'm gonna warn you things are about to get uncomfortable one of reg times biggest influences was minstrel music yikes minstrel she was a kind of performance that came about in the early 1800s in America it was a supposedly comedic performance built around dressing white people up in blackface and playing out offensive stereotypes about black people I told you things are gonna get uncomfortable and as much as I would like to just brush this over and pretend it never happened the fact of the matter is that minstrel see is an important if dark chapter in American history and it helps you understand the world that Scott Joplin was brought up in minstrel see wasn't all white though many black artists got their start in minstrel see and one of the most famous dances of minstrel performance came from black communities the cakewalk some speculate that the cakewalk had its origins as a satyr ization of white dances whether that's truly the case or not the cakewalk quickly caught on in minstrel shows it had a very specific rhythm associated with it a 2/4 March with a syncopated polyrhythm inside of course that very same concept helped define ragtime and ragtime performers weren't shy about acknowledging this Scott Joplin even wrote a cakewalk song called swipe C now it's important to note that though he loomed over the music Joplin didn't invent ragtime some of the first ragtime songs were written by people who were themselves former minstrel performers like Ernest Hogan who wrote pas mala in 1896 and then there was Ben Harney who wrote you've been a good old wagon but you done broke down which some point to as the first ragtime song but reg time didn't really explode until Joplin came on the scene in 1899 Joplin would published two sheets that would change ragtime the aforementioned Maple Leaf Rag and original rags the songs codified ragtime and set a new blueprint for the style going forward both of them featured one of Joplin signatures frequent modulation music is built around tone centers collections of notes that work well together modulation is what happens when you shift from one tonal center to another within the same song modulation became an important part of this structure of Joplin's rags the structure consisted of four distinct sections following a pattern of a a b b a c c DD typically the c section would see a clear modulation in the form of a key change in the case of the Entertainer the c section modulates to f major while the rest of the song is in C major [Music] another aspect of Joplin's music that helped it shine was the temple in your head you might associate ragtime with fast piano playing but Joplin was quite specific about one thing ragtime was not meant to be played fast he even wrote not fast on the sheet of the Entertainer and when you play the Entertainer at a slower tempo you allow the song to tell a story you allowed to build drama and tension as it speeds up slightly and changes keys and volumes the entertainer and Maple Leaf Rag became staples of the genre and countless people would try to imitate the Maple Leaf Rag in the years to come but Joplin wasn't simply satisfied with ruling over popular music he wanted himself and all his fellow black musicians to be taken seriously as songwriters and so he decided to write an opera tree monisha tree monisha mixed shop lands ragtime sounds together with more traditional classical and opera music you can hear the combination of these forms in the offers finale a real slow drag more than just the music those free monisha called an important social message Scott Joplin wanted to push civil rights forward and help advance the black cause in America and to create a truly original black art form so trim oneisha lays out a blueprint as to how to do that through education the titular character is a young freed woman who uses education to lead her community against those that would exploit them it's an incredibly forward-thinking story paired with some remarkable music the Joplin would never see it live not as he intended it anyways Joplin couldn't find anyone willing to publish his radical opera and ended up trying to self publish it in 1915 in the end he was only able to put together a small staging of it in a Harlem rehearsal hall and it really didn't live up to his grandiose idea of what it could have been that marked the beginning of the end for the king of ragtime in the coming years he would succumb to syphilis and dementia and on April 1st 1917 at the age of 48 Scott Joplin died in a psychiatric hospital by this time he was penniless and he was buried in an unmarked grave the ragtime era ended with the death of Scott Joplin but its influence continued a Jewish immigrant named Irving Berlin was an up-and-comer at the end of the ragtime era and he scored his first hit with Alexander's ragtime band Berlin would go on to become one of the most important figures in American popular music and Broadway and he wrote classics that are still sung to this day and then there were others who took ragtime in a different direction Fats Waller evolved ragtime into a new kind of piano playing called stride and alongside another graduate of the ragtime school Jelly Roll Morton Waller helped establish the norms for the next emerging form of popular music a heavily syncopated music that would modulate through many tone centers a new exciting style of music called jazz and we all know where that went but there's one more chapter in the story of Scott Joplin in 1970 a musician and musicologist named Joshua Rifkin dug up Joplin's sheets and recorded himself playing them he released those recordings as an album Scott Joplin piano regs and it started a ragtime revival three years later several Joplin songs including the Entertainer would be featured in George Roy hill oscar-winning film the sting Scott Joplin was alive once more in the hearts of American pop culture amidst this resurgence people dug up tree minissha which had been forgotten about after Joplin's death and then in 1972 61 years after it was written Scott Joplin's opus saw its world premiere performed by the Atlanta Symphony under Robert Shaw it was immediately recognized as the masterpiece that it is and in 1976 Joplin posthumously received a pure surprise for Truman issue the world was ready to embrace the late Joplin and celebrate the brilliant forward-thinking artists that he was and amidst all of this after laying unmarked for half a century Scott Joplin's rave finally received a marker in 1973 I don't know about you but listening to all this ragtime really made me want to dust off the old piano if you want to teach yourself how to play the entertainer or Maple Leaf Rag you can get started with Mark de Hyde's learn piano in 30 days series on Skillshare that course will bring you from being a novice pianist to being able to sight-read play by ear and even compose your own music and there's plenty more where that came from Jessica ishes logotype masterclass will give you some of the skills you need to be a freelance graphic designer or you could get meta with Mike Boyd's how to learn which will teach you the strategies you need to approach learning any new skill you want if you sign up with the link in the description you can try all of this out absolutely free for two months that's 2 months of access to thousands of courses on a whole assortment of topics not only will you be able to learn a bunch of new skills but giving Skillshare a shot is actually a great way to support my channel too and it really helps me make these videos week after week so head on over to sk l dot s h slash polyphonic 21 and give it a shot

Channel: Polyphonic

Views: 216,008

Rating: 4.9564023 out of 5

Keywords: polyphonic, music, video essay, ragtime, music history, jazz

Id: VCA0O2iN3xE

Length: 12min 6sec (726 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 03 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/fulrach]

I really like this guy's visual storytelling. Finishing the intro with history with where the body ends up, following the rise of the song, and then showing the grave in the conclusion, that's how you story-tell.