Ragtime was just one musical style that developed out of African American music in the late 19th century. Aside from ragtime, African American music also influenced the cakewalk, stride and novelty piano – all of which sit between classical and early jazz traditions.
The first style to emerge was the cakewalk, followed by ragtime, stride and novelty piano.
The Cakewalk
The cakewalk, or prize walk, owes its name to the dances popular in African American communities. In these communities, couples would line up in a square formation and then move on the dancefloor to lightly syncopated melodies.
Cakewalks often featured simple steps and high-leg prances, and the best dancers of the night were awarded a cake for their performance.
By 1892, cakewalk was so ingrained in American culture that cakewalk competitions were held in towns across the United States, and the cakewalk prance would later be referenced in ragtime music, such as Scott Joplin’s Ragtime Dance.
During this time, the cakewalk also spread from dance halls and minstrel shows, and was soon performed in national theatres and venues of the upper class.
Ragtime
To match the taste and standards of the high society, musicians developed more refined, instrumental versions of the cakewalk that were suitable for public display and performances on parlour pianos in grand homes.
Many of these variations combined the catchiness of the cakewalk with the rigour and harmonic complexity seen in classical works.
The new songs, written in ragged time, were more elaborate, technically demanding and varied than the cakewalk dances of the previous decades.
They were often played on pianos with a ragged melody over a steady bass line, and because of the high level of syncopation, they soon became known as ‘ragged times’ – later shortened to ‘ragtime’.
Stride
While ragtime was mainly composed music, the best pianists saw opportunities to improvise on the style. Highly improvised and less structured pieces developed out of ragtime in the 1920s and soon became known under their own style, called stride.
This style features wide leaps in the left hand on the piano, as players are seen ‘striding’ along the keys. Because of the improvisation, stride is also relatively close to modern day jazz.
Novelty
Another style that developed out ragtime in the 1920s was novelty piano. Novelty was lightly syncopated, and used more advanced rhythmic structures inspired by classical music. Triplets, dotted rhythms, and modern harmonies are some of the more complex features that made novelty more sophisticated and less improvisational than stride.
However, neither novelty nor stride reached the same popularity as ragtime. Out of all the styles, ragtime was best known and has continued to shape the development of music through its distinctive, syncopated melodies.
Why ragtime succeeded when other styles didn’t
While ragtime’s rich tradition continues to live on through dedicated festivals and modern ragtime composers, the same cannot be said for the cakewalk, stride or novelty piano.
The short-lived success of the cakewalk
The cakewalk was closely connected to dance contests and minstrel shows in the early 1900s. Outside of this context, the popularity of the African American style was short-lived.
During the peak years of the cakewalk, piano rolls were yet to be made available to the masses, so the style primarily spread through live performances in dance halls. Cakewalks were also rarely recorded on sheet music, and considered by some to be merely a lightly syncopated march.
The enduring popularity of ragtime
The rise of ragtime, meanwhile, coincided with the development of player pianos and piano rolls.
These innovations helped bring ragtime music into homes across the country – and kept it there for decades to come. After all, piano rolls were valuable, and less likely to be lost or destroyed than a fickle piece of paper (with sheet music).
Ragtime was also one of the first popular styles that could be enjoyed at home either with or without a skilled pianist. This flexibility probably contributed to its early success and enduring popularity.
The challenges of novelty and stride
Novelty and stride piano pieces, despite becoming immensely popular in the early 1920s, never saw the same success that ragtime did. While ragtime was tasteful and catchy, novelty and stride consisted mainly in complex pieces designed to show off the pianist’s skill.
This meant that they were too difficult for the average pianist to perform at a comfortable speed, and the now available recording and playback technology was not enough to preserve the style. So unlike, ragtime, which remains popular in mainstream culture today, the novelty and stride is loved and preserved by a small community of jazz pianists.