Rag & bone aslen flat booties11/6/2023 ![]() Miss Irwin says the way to learn to sing "rag-time" is to catch a negro and study him. Her first "rag-time" was "The Bully," in which she made great sport by bringing a little coloured boy on the stage with her. The very essence of rag-time is that it shall lack all art, depending for the spirit to be infused more upon the performer than upon the composer himself. The negroes call their clog-dancing "ragging" and the dance a "rag." Conceive the futility of trying to reduce the intangible ragness to a strict system of misbegotten grace notes and untimely rests! In attempting to perfect, and simplify, art is destroying the unhampered spirit in which consists the whole beauty of rag-time music. What the derivation of the word is I have not the faintest idea. If rag-time was called tempo di raga or rague-temps it might win honor more speedily. Rag (n.) "ragtime dance tune" is from 1897. Also rag-time, "syncopated, jazzy piano music," 1896, perhaps from rag "dance ball" (1895, American English dialect), or a shortening of ragged, in reference to the syncopated melody.
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