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PrintRagtime music was born in Missouri more than 100 years ago and has influenced everything from jazz to hip-hop . This year’s Blind Boone Ragtime and Early Jazz Festival, which starts Sunday at the Missouri Theatre, will show that ragtime has since become popular around the world.
Visiting musicians will arrive for the three-day event from Canada, Australia and Norway to perform. Others are making the trip from Chicago, San Francisco and nearly every surrounding state.
Among those coming to Columbia is Morten Gunnar Larsen, a winner of the Spellemannsprisen award, the Norwegian Grammy. He specialized in classic ragtime and early jazz piano at the Norwegian Academy of Music and will be a headliner at the festival.
The ragtime faithful who make the journey to Columbia are passionate people who see themselves as the keepers of an original American art form that evolved from the stylistic blend of European and African musical styles. The festival is a reunion as much as a concert series for many.
“They are a little like missionaries,” said Lucille Salerno, the event director, and host of the ragtime show on KOPN/89.5 FM .
J.W. “Blind” Boone was one of the founding fathers of ragtime, according to Salerno . A Warrensburg, Missouri native, he was a gifted pianist who played by ear because he had been blind since childhood. Boone played classical European music with an infusion of African music, the preferred genre of the younger, hipper 19th-century audience. Today, ragtime may seem far removed from contemporary music, but its influence is unmistakable in most forms of popular music.
“Boone represents the missing link in American music,” Salerno said. “Because he was so young and was right on the scene, his compositions are really historical documents.”
Boone used the technique of mixing African rhythms into classical European music to make ragtime. The hallmark of African music is multiple rhythms in one composition. On the piano, the left hand is playing one rhythm while the right hand is introducing another, superimposed over the first. For example, the left hand plays an even 4/4 rhythm, and the right hand “steals” some of the meters for one note and plays the next one more quickly. The two hands playing together create syncopation. The technique persists in all American music, Salerno said.
The Blind Boone festival will mix daytime concerts with seminars on the history and art of ragtime conducted by experts and musicians. One seminar will be led by Reginald Robinson, recipient of a John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, which is given in recognition of exceptional creativity and originality. The Chicago musician’s seminar will chronicle the music that flourished in Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood, home of a vibrant jazz scene in the 1920s.
Every evening of the festival, the musicians will gather for a tradition known as the “afterglow,” an informal jam session in the lobby of the Regency Inn downtown. Musicians playing two baby grand pianos will take over the hotel lobby, said Mike Ebert, owner of the Regency.
“These are musicians, and they like music,” Ebert said. “This is a chance for them to let their hair down and have fun. We’re going to keep it informal for them, and we expect them to play well into the night.”
Steve Standiford, formerly of Columbia, is a pianist and surgical oncologist who is coming from Wisconsin for the festival. He will act as master of ceremonies for the daytime concerts and will also perform.
“My mother wouldn’t have me making my living with this, so I do it for fun.” Standiford said,
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