By Jim Bloch
Ragtime is America’s first original style of popular music, peaking in popularity between 1890 and 1910. A forerunner of jazz, ragtime is marked by its syncopation or “raggedness.” It emerged from African American communities in cities like New Orleans and St. Louis and incorporated polyrhythmic elements of African music as well as Latin beats, Eastern European harmonies and Western European musical forms, including the marches of John Philip Souza.
Scott Joplin was ragtime’s most famous composer, performer and proselytizer and the style impacted not only jazz music, but classical composers such as Claude Debussy, Erik Satie and Igor Stravinsky.
Chances are that you’ll find no better introduction to or expression of ragtime than to experience a performance by the 13-piece River Raisin Ragtime Revue under the direction of William Pemberton.
The band will perform — and talk about ragtime and its history — on Sunday, July 16 at 5 p.m. in the First United Methodist Church, 415 North Third Street, St. Clair.
Paul Shafer, the former musical director at St. Mary Catholic Church in St. Clair, and his St. Clair Cultural Series are sponsoring the event.
Tickets are $40 per family and $20 per individual. Pre-show tickets are available at www.eventbrite.com. Student tickets are $6 and available only at the door.
The ticket price includes an appetizer afterglow at the Anchor Point Bistro in Riverview Plaza, just east of the church.
The band features two violins, a viola, cello, flute, clarinet, two cornets, trombone, drums, banjo, piano and tuba, played by Pemberton himself.
Based in Tecumseh, near the River Raisin, the R4 has performed all over Michigan and the Midwest, including The Ark and the Michigan Theater in Ann Arbor, Greenfield Village, the Detroit Institute of Art and worked with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.
Among its eight CDs, the band’s 2006 Ragtime Detroit! explores the city and state’s contributions to ragtime and features hit rags like “Creole Belles” and “Dill Pickles” as well as previously unrecorded ragtime rarities.
“The music on this CD has been meticulously researched and is performed to an equally meticulous high standard,” said Mike Durham, writing in Just Jazz, based in London, England. “This CD is packed with rare treasures, beautifully played.”
Look forward to hearing the Joplin standards “The Chrysanthemum,” “Bethena” and “The Magnetic Rag,” as well as the Jelly Roll Morton tune “Sidewalk Blues” among the more than a dozen songs to be performed in St. Clair.
In addition to its performances, R4 maintains a collection of rag-related historical items, including more than 5,000 orchestrations, printed music, books, photos, records and artifacts.
“In 2019, Dr. Karl Koenig, foremost authority on the origins of jazz in New Orleans, donated his life’s work to the R4 archive, greatly expanding the collection,” according to the R4 web site. “R4 has collaborated with the University of Michigan School of Information and student interns to organize and digitize the materials.”
For details, contact stclairculturalseries@gmail.com.
On July 16, expect the music to be energetic, ebullient, bouncy — and just plain fun.
Jim Bloch is a freelance writer based in St. Clair, Michigan. Contact him at bloch.jim@gmail.com.
