Title: King of Rags
Author Name: Eric
Bronson
Author Bio: Eric Bronson teaches
philosophy in the Humanities Department at York University in
Toronto. He is the editor of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and
Philosophy (Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), Poker and Philosophy (Open Court,
2006), Baseball and Philosophy (Open Court, 2004), and co-editor
of The Hobbit and Philosophy (Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), and The
Lord of the Rings and Philosophy (Open Court, 2003). In 2007 he
served as the "Soul Trainer" for the CBC radio morning
show, "Sounds Like Canada." His current project is a book
called The Dice Shooters, based loosely on his experiences
dealing craps in Las Vegas.
Author Links - The link for any or all
of the following...
Guest Post:
Admit it,
it's awfully fun to poke fun a pop stars.
I've been guilty of it myself.
Britney Spears, Miley Cyrus, Justin Bieber, sometimes it's just too hard
to resist.
But we
should also keep in mind that if history teaches us anything, it's that popular
musicians are remembered a lot longer than their critics. And we should be thankful for that.
It wasn't
so long ago that Elvis Pressley was criticized for immoral music. Surely our rock music today would be a lot
poorer if he didn't tune us out and keep cutting records.
Fifty years
before Elvis sang Hound Dog, ragtime musicians were criticized for corrupting
the morals of young teenagers, seducing them away from the European classics
for a new, distinctly American style of syncopated joy.
As we celebrate
the birthdays of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln this month, I like to go
back to the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago.
America was figuring out what kind of country it wanted to be. It still liked the music and manners of the
Old World, but it also wanted to have little fun. Inside the Fair was the world's first Ferris
Wheel, a delightfully tasty candy called Cracker Jack, and a highly
entertaining disappearing act by the crazy Houdini brothers. Outside the Fair, ragtime musicians serenaded
visitors with its "immoral," happy melodies from marching bands.
Just a few
blocks further afield. the Parliament of the World's Religions was
convening. The beloved Swami Vivikananda
had sailed all the way from India to preach his message of tolerance and
peace. The timing was suspicious. Why would a relatively young Hindu mystic
pick the Fair to speak out against fanatacism and hatred? Throughout his life the Swami argued that the
point of religion was to take people exactly as they were, where they were, and
speak to them directly.
I wonder if
pop musicians aren't doing something similar.
They speak to teenagers so effectively because they have the envious
talent to meet them exactly where they are.
We might still argue over how effective they are in lifting us up, but
we might think twice about lobbing our protestations across the
generations. In the history of popular
music teenagers have a way of drowning us out.
Is that a good thing?
You better
"beliebe" it.
Book Genre: Historical Fiction
Publisher: Neverland
Publishing
Release Date: May, 2013
Buy Link(s): Amazon
Book Description:
King of Rags
follows the life of Scott Joplin and his fellow ragtime musicians as
they frantically transform the seedy and segregated underbelly of
comedians, conmen and prostitutes who called America’s most vibrant
cities home. Inspired by Booker T. Washington and the Dahomeyan
defeat in West Africa, Joplin was ignored by the masses for writing
the music of Civil Rights fifty years before America was ready to
listen.
Excerpt One:
Whenever he had a
difficult decision to make, Scott set himself up on the small hill
with high grass and wildflowers. In the starlight he was especially
careful not to disturb the patient, purple flowers. A traveling white
schoolteacher once read to his class the story of the heliotrope from
Ovid’s
Metamorphoses.
Derided by the world and scorned by her lover the Sun God, a poor
nymph keeps her eyes ever fixed to the sun. Streaked with purple, she
is covered in leaves and flowers, roots that claw their way around
her helplessness, forever binding her to the earth.
“‘An excess of
passion begets an excess of grief,’” the schoolteacher quoted.
“Don’t reach so high. You’ll be much happier if you lower your
sights.”
But there was
something about the nymph’s undying faith that touched him inside.
She refused to be stuck here in this world, and that refusal brought
hope along with the pain. Scott thought he understood the nymph’s
eternal conflict. His music wouldn’t right the wrong, but it might
help ease the loss. Long after the sun abandoned her, Scott sat among
the heliotrope and played for her his coronet.
The hill had a
further advantage: it overlooked the new train station. He was there
one December day, ten years earlier, when the first Texas &
Pacific railway pulled in from Dallas, on its way to Fulton,
Arkansas. Since then his father had taught him to play the violin,
banjo and coronet, but none of them could take him beyond his
colorless world. Maybe the trains couldn’t either, but the tracks
held that promise, going outwards, ever away. His mother believed the
coronet was
the Devil’s
instrument. Scott disagreed. Any instrument that brought relief to
others was useful. It shouldn’t much matter who was dancing at the
other end.
Under the wavering
light of a half-moon, Scott played with all the sounds of the night:
the high-pitched melody of cicada bugs over the running bass line of
lumber cars and freight trains, garbage crates and short hauls
sounding their syncopated iron rhythms: boom-chugga
boom-boom: boomchugga boom-boom.
The music of the night trains was the sound of waiting—waiting and
waning and wasting away. The greatest secrets in life, Scott knew,
lay not in the music or the
people who played
it, but in the short, silent spaces that sometimes fell unexpectedly
off the beat. The Stop Man taught him that without hardly even saying
a word.
Thank you for hosting today:)
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