1868-1917
Ragtime Musician

Early Life.

Scott Joplin, the child of a former slave and a freeborn black woman, grew up in Texarkana on the Texas-Arkansas border. His mother took a special interest in her young son's education and cultivated his love of music. As a young man Joplin played music professionally, performing in the Texas Medley Quartette, a local group, and teaching piano, guitar, and mandolin with his brothers, Will and Robert.

Traveling and Touring.

Joplin left Texarkana and traveled the country as a musician. He went to Chicago in 1893 to the World's Columbian Exposition, where he, along with other Americans, first heard the new syncopated sounds of ragtime. Ragtime was notable for its "ragged" rhythm. Since its beginnings in the 1880s, ragtime music was an African American musical form, with roots in slavery and complicated African rhythms. It was disseminated and mimicked in blackface minstrelsy...