Scott

Joplins Maple Leaf Rag (1899) is one of the most famous pieces of ragtime
music and music in general. When played, the song is lively and inventive,
spanning the majority of the pianos eighty-eight keys in fewer than three minutes.
At the intended tempo, the first sixteen measures (about the length of the first page,
pictured left) take only eighteen seconds. Most people, given those same measures
in the form of sheet music instead of sound, would need a lot more than eighteen
seconds to comprehend them the same way.

The process of taking a piece of music from notes on a page to a fully realized song
requires much more than just reading: you need to first have taken time to learn to
read music, and then time for focused contemplation to read the particular piece.
Even this, however, falls a little short. A full understanding of a song involves having
written or played the piece, both of which require mastering the ability to read
sheet music and the ability to play an instrument. For the rest of us, however, the
best understanding we can get of a piece of music comes from experiencing it off the
page.

In this regard, history is a lot like music.

Take, for example, the story of how ragtime music rose to extreme popularity. One
of the first pieces of ragtime music to be transcribed was All Coons Look Alike to
Me (1896) by Ernest Hogan, a famous musician, composer, and the first African-
American performer on Broadway. His song tells the story of a mans denouncement
by his ex-lover, and its immense fame brought ragtime to the entire country and
started an enormous rise in the genres popularity. Unfortunately, it also led to the
creation of a number of coon songs with deeply racist and stereotypical portrayals
of black people.

Toward the end of his life, Hogan stated that his intention in putting his work on
paper and on stage was not to spark a proliferation of racist music, but to bring the
music of ragtime to a new height of popularity: That one song opened the way for a
lot of colored and white songwriters.... The ragtime players were the boys who
played just by ear their own creations of music which would have been lost to the
world if I had not put it on paper. Eventually, he believed, the genre would become
so popular that hit ragtime songs would be possible without racist sentiments
attached. As the popularity of black ragtime artists like Scott Joplin can attest, Hogan
was right.

With only the surface-level understanding provided by his actions, history might
have remembered Hogan just as a man who sparked a mass creation of coon songs.
Instead, we remember him as a much more complex human being who laid the
foundations for an entire genre of music. None of us no person other than Hogan
himself can know what it meant to actually be Ernest Hogan, but history is much
closer to understanding because, at some point in time, someone listened to him. We
can get closer to comprehension if we continue to listen to him by reading that
quote. Just as Hogan transcribed ragtime music so others could hear it and learn to
love it, some historian transcribed Hogans thoughts so that we could come closer to
understanding his intentions. It is not a perfect system Hogans work was
misunderstood and corrupted in his time, and his words may be as well but it
allows for a comprehension of a level of truth that would not otherwise be
conveyed.

When E. L. Doctorow, the author of the novel Ragtime (1975), talks about ragtime
music, he describes it as a force of movement. The novel mentions the genres
syncopation and melodies and focuses on the importance of how it feels to
experience a piece of ragtime. In the book, Joplins Maple Leaf Rag is a vigorous
piece of music that roused the senses and never stood still a moment. The
importance of ragtime in the story is not how it looks on a piece of paper, but how it
feels to experience it.

Doctorow knew that our records of the human experience are fallible and that, like
modern historians, he could never actually know what it meant to be alive at the
turn of the 20th century. After writing his novel, Doctorow admitted that he never
went through a process of extensive research to ensure the storys accuracy. He
explained his process thusly: first you invent something, then you find a
corroborating source or [you] lie.

If Ragtime was intended to be a factual account of real-life events, then its safe to
say that it fails. The story glosses over many actual events, and those it does include
are often partially inaccurate or entirely made up. The novel offers its readers no
actual insight into the lives and minds of its "real" historical figures, but it does offer
us a great deal of insight into the lives and minds of a diverse cast of fictional
characters who remind us of people from both the past and present. Coalhouse
Walker Jr. may never have existed but marginalized black men have for a very long
time and, unfortunately, still do. Ragtime asks us to experience empathy; its
importance as a work of historical fiction is not in whether the specific facts of the
story are true, but whether the story conveys the truth of the characters humanity.

Just like with music, listening to and watching Ragtime is an altogether different
experience than reading it. By placing the thoughts and emotions of these characters
in the hands of people who are physically before us, the musical Ragtime connects
the abstract relationships of fictional people to real faces. While the novel allows us
an understanding of multiple characters points of view, the musical materializes
those characters right in front of us and allows us to experience their stories and
lives first hand.

Ragtime does as much as it can through story, music, and character to place us in the
minds of people a little different from us, but it can never quite compare to listening
to a real persons story. Hogans words might offer us an understanding of his
experiences, but Ragtime takes the idea of a black musicians struggles in a racist
society and places it in the larger context of what it means to be part of a
marginalized group. The story may not be a perfect account of any real humans
experience, but the New Rochelle familys relationship with and slow understanding
of Sarah, Coalhouse, and eventually Tateh points towards a greater idea: while we
cant ever know what it actually feels like to face any bigotry we arent personally
subjected to, we can come much closer to understanding by listening to those who
experience the prejudices we dont. Communication be it through personal
conversation, artistic expression, or historical record may be flawed, but its the
best tool we have to understand and empathize with the rest of humanity.






Ruth Scherr, Dramaturg