As for Ragtime, I go straight to the statement that it is the one artistic production by which America is known the world over.  It has been all-conquering.  Everywhere it is hailed as “American music.”

For a dozen years or so there has been a steady tendency to divorce Ragtime from the Negro; in fact, to take from him the credit of having originated it.  Probably the younger people of the present generation do not know that Ragtime is of Negro origin.  The change wrought in Ragtime and the way in which it is accepted by the country have been brought about chiefly through the change which has gradually been made in the words and stories accompanying the music.  Once the text of all Ragtime songs was written in Negro dialect, and was about Negroes in the cabin or in the cotton field or on the levee or at a jubilee or on Sixth Avenue or at a ball, and about their love affairs.  To-day, only a small proportion of Ragtime songs relate at all to the Negro.  The truth is, Ragtime is now national rather than racial.  But that does not abolish in any way the claim of the American Negro as its originator.

Ragtime music was originated by colored piano players in the questionable resorts of St. Louis, Memphis, and other Mississippi River towns.  These men did not know any more about the theory of music than they did about the theory of the universe.  They were guided by their natural musical instinct and talent, but above all by the Negro’s extraordinary sense of rhythm.  Any one who is familiar with Ragtime may note that its chief charm is not in melody, but in rhythms.  These players often improvised crude and, at times, vulgar words to fit the music.  This was the beginning of the Ragtime song.

Ragtime music got its first popular hearing at Chicago during the world’s fair in that city.  From Chicago it made its way to New York, and then started on its universal triumph.

The earliest Ragtime songs, like Topsy, “jes’ grew.”  Some of these earliest songs were taken down by white men, the words slightly altered or changed, and published under the names of the arrangers.  They sprang into immediate popularity and earned small fortunes.  The first to become widely known was “The Bully,” a levee song which had been long used by roustabouts along the Mississippi.  It was introduced in New York by Miss May Irwin, and gained instant popularity.  Another one of these “jes’ grew” songs was one which for a while disputed for place with Yankee Doodle; perhaps, disputes it even to-day.  That song was “A Hot Time in the Old Town To-night”; introduced and made popular by the colored regimental bands during the Spanish-American War.