Quotes & Sayings About Ragtime Music

In spite of the bans which musicians and music teachers have placed on it, the people still demand and enjoy Ragtime. — James Weldon Johnson

How many times in her thirty years had she heard the same remarks, the same feeble jokes about her name? — Haruki Murakami

New Orleans had a great tradition of celebration. Opera, military marching bands, folk music, the blues, different types of church music, ragtime, echoes of traditional African drumming, and all of the dance styles that went with this music could be heard and seen throughout the city. When all of these kinds of music blended into one, jazz was born. — Wynton Marsalis

Maybe I should sit. Plenty of people use sitting as a way to pass the time. — Lauren Graham

It was the artist's duty to find the appropriate objects, and the audience's job to decipher meaning. If the piece failed to work, it was their fault, not yours. — David Sedaris

I know it sounds foolishly old fashioned, but I'm stuck with this idea that there's something dignified and noble about facing your enemy and looking him in the eye before you thrust a saber in his heart. — Michael Robotham

Syncopations are no indication of light or trashy music, and to shy bricks at 'hateful ragtime' no longer passes for musical culture. — Scott Joplin

If knowledge is power, let's spread it as widely as possible and dilute it to deny those who would abuse it. — Stuart Aken

American musicians, instead of investigating ragtime, attempt to ignore it, or dismiss it with a contemptuous word. But that has always been the course of scholasticism in every branch of art. Whatever new thing the 'people' like is poohpoohed; whatever is 'popular' is spoken of as not worth the while. The fact is, nothing great or enduring, especially in music, has ever sprung full-fledged and unprecedented from the brain of any master; the best that he gives to the world he gathers from the hearts of the people, and runs it through the alembic of his genius. — James Weldon Johnson

What you really want to do in investments is figure out what's important and knowable. If it's unimportant or unknowable you forget about it. — Warren Buffett

What, then, are we to say about the suggestion that a hearty faith in the absolute sovereignty of God is inimical to evangelism? We are bound to say that anyone who makes this suggestion thereby shows that he has simply failed to understand what the doctrine of divine sovereignty means. Not only does it undergird evangelism, and uphold the evangelist, by creating a hope of success that could not otherwise be entertained; it also teaches us to bind together preaching and prayer; and as it makes us bold and confident before men, so it makes us humble and importunate before God. — J.I. Packer

I am essentially a painter of the kind of still life composition that communicates a sense of tranquillity and privacy, moods which I have always valued above all else. — Giorgio Morandi

I feel like the gods have certainly patted me on the head. — Dane Cook

I never understood retirement. What is the attraction of retirement? I go down there to Florida and look around and I said, my God, who wants this? Not me. — Andy Rooney

A pious man is one who would be an atheist if the king were. — Jean De La Bruyere

The Democratic party is one that I've always observed. I have struggled greatly in life from the day I was born, and I am honored to be a part of something that focuses on working class citizens and molds them into a proud specimen. — Joan Crawford

Ragtime has about the same amount of respect as comics. And in a way they're similar art forms. Ragtime is highly compositional, and the emotion in the music is built in, whereas in jazz a lot of that emotion comes from the way it's performed. — Chris Ware

What is scurrilously called ragtime is an invention that is here to stay. That is now conceded by all classes of musicians ... All publication s masquerading under the name of ragtime are not the genuine article ... That real ragtime of the higher class is rather difficult to play is a painful truth which most pianists have discovered. Syncopations are no indication of light or trashy music ... Joplin ragtime is destroyed by careless or imperfect rendering, and very often players lost the effect entirely by playing too fast. — Scott Joplin

Go away. I hate everyone right now, and I'm pretty sure that includes you. — Jill Shalvis

Roger (Kellaway) amazed us all. Blessed with great technique, he could play any style, from ragtime to space music. Whatever style he chose to play at the moment would be filled with wonderful surprises that kept the rest of us continually delighted. — Bill Crow