Give me the songs of a nation…

“And there was distant music, simple and somehow sublime, Giving the nation a new syncopation — The people called it Ragtime!”

A couple weeks back I went with a group of folks to see the musical Ragtime at the Kennedy Center – a fantastic production of a fantastic show.  I’d seen it twice before – a community theatre production that left something to be desired and a dinner theatre production that was quite good – but this production was amazing.

As I was pondering what to say about the show, I was struck anew by how the show is framed around the very issue this blog is focused on – the arts ability to shape culture.  As that first quote (from the opening number) presents it, ragtime music is credited with “giving the nation a new syncopation” – inspiring (and reflecting) the cultural change going on at the time.

The musical, based on a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by E. L. Doctorow, focuses on an often overlooked era – the pre-WWI 1900s.  The three main families – WASP, black, and immigrant – function as types for that era and are surrounded by historical characters such as Henry Ford, J. P. Morgan, chorus girl Evelyn Nesbit, anarchist Emma Goldman, Harry Houdini, and Booker T. Washington.  If you ever get a chance to see it, I highly recommend it.

A few more lyrics from the opening song:

“And there was music playing,
Catching a nation in its prime…
Beggar and millionaire
Everyone, everywhere
Moving to the Ragtime!

And there was distant music
Skipping a beat, singing a dream.
A strange insistent music
Putting out heat,
Picking up steam.

The sound of distant thunder
Suddenly starting to climb…

It was the music of something beginning,
An era exploding, a century spinning
In riches and rags and in rhythm and rhyme.
The people called it Ragtime!”