Ragtime artist takes students on a journey in musical history

Washington Elementary School students took a musical journey on the road of ragtime Tuesday afternoon, courtesy of 2012 Scott Joplin Ragtime Festival artist-in-residence Nan Bostick.

The Menlo Park, Calif., resident told the students they were going to “get in a time capsule that will take you back 120 years when there was no electricity.”

Bostick explained that when people wanted to listen to music, they had a couple of options: go to a park to hear a community band, or learn to play an instrument and how to read music and play it themselves.

She called ragtime “America’s first all-original form of music” and discussed how sheet music was, in effect, the MP3s of the ragtime era, as that was how people were able to purchase and share popular tunes.

Bostick spent much of her presentation discussing the career of ragtime-era composer and publisher Charles N. Daniels, to whom she is a grandniece. As she played his first big hit, “Margery,” she had the students keep time by patting their knees to a march beat.

Bostick stressed that every new musical trend comes from youth, and ragtime was no different. In the era of marches, “everyone wanted to ‘rag it’ a bit,” she said. Kids loved ragtime and adults hated it at first.

“When adults tell you about the horridness of your music, ignore it,” she said. “Parents always say that.”

Bostick told the students about Joplin’s ties to Sedalia and his efforts to sell his rags to music publishers in Kansas City before she launched into Joplin’s “Maple Leaf Rag” and “The Entertainer.” When she asked if the latter tune sounded familiar, some of the students said they had heard it as part of the soundtrack for the “Thomas the Tank Engine” television show.

 Bostick discussed ragtime’s evolution, starting as an offshoot of marches, then being infused with blues to become jazz. The students laughed at her descriptions of the “animal dance” crazes, including the Kangaroo Hop, the Peacock Strut and the Lame Duck.

“The world of ragtime still exists, believe it or not,” she said. “Ragtime never died, and is still being composed.”

As the students filed out, she proved her point by playing her own composition, “Bean Whistle Rag.”