Swipesy Cakewalk

At a glance

• What it isa ragtime piece for piano in B-flat major, about three minutes long.
• Who and whenwritten by Scott Joplin together with Arthur Marshall, and published by John Stark in 1900.
• What to listen fora right hand that bounces as if dancing, over a left hand that keeps the step.

Listen for

• The left hand's stepin a rag the left hand usually alternates a low note and a chord, walking evenly in two. Like a dancer's feet, it lays down a floor that never wobbles.
• The right hand's syncopation: syncopation is rhythm that deliberately sidesteps the strong beat. Notice the moments when the right hand jumps just ahead of the beat, and see whether you start to sway.
• When the section changes: rags are usually built from several short sections that follow one another. Listen for how the height of the melody and the mood shift when a new section begins.

When it was written

The cakewalk is generally traced to a dance performed by enslaved Black people on plantations in the American South. Couples strutted with straight backs and showy steps, and the dance is said to have gently mocked the stiff ballroom manners of white landowners. The name is said to come from contests where the prize was a cake. In the 1890s the cakewalk became a craze on stage and in dance halls.

Joplin worked in Sedalia, Missouri, in the 1890s, and made his name in 1899 with the Maple Leaf Rag, published by John Stark. This piece followed the very next year. Arthur Marshall, whose name appears with his, was a young musician who studied with Joplin in Sedalia.

The composer, Scott Joplin

Joplin was born in Texas around 1868. His father had been enslaved and later worked on the railroad; his mother kept the family going with domestic work. Joplin treated ragtime as serious music, and in 1908 he published School of Ragtime, a guide to playing it. He died in New York in 1917. His music found a wide audience again after it was used in the 1973 film The Sting, and in 1976 he received a special Pulitzer award.