The music was seductive, surprising, frisky — and it shook America to its very foundations. The music of ragtime, and its dramatic impact on a fast-changing society at the turn of the 20th century, ...

BLAMING MUSIC FOR social ills— especially violence—is nothing new. As early as the turn of the century, ragtime music was seen as the cause of everything from race riots to domestic violence to ...

Friday is the anniversary of Scott Joplin’s death in 1917. The story of this Black master of the ragtime genre can seem like one that never got far beyond the starting gate and ended with a sad ...