Scot Joplin Biography Essay

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Biography Scot Joplin was an African-American pianist and a composer who was born in between 1867/68 and died on the 1st of April 1917. Scot Joplin was born into a musical family of railway laborers in Texas. He was greatly helped by his teachers to develop and understand his knowledge of music in his early years. In his young age, the composer grew up in Texarkana where he was involved in the formation of a vocal quartet and also taught guitar and mandolin (Berlin, 1996). In the late 1880’s, Joplin voluntarily left his the railway laborer job and went around South America as an itinerant musician. In the year 1893, he went to Chicago for the World’s fair and played a key part in making ragtime a national craze by the year 1897. He moved to …show more content…
One of the legacies that he is known for is the fact that, together with his fellow ragtime composers, they rejuvenated the American popular music and this fostered an appreciation for the African American music among the European Americans. In achieving this, they all came up with some exhilarating as well as some serious liberating dance tunes that completely changed the American musical taste (Reed, 1985). Despite being poor during his death and being disappointed during his death time, the composer contributed greatly towards setting the composition standard for ragtime and played a very critical role in developing ragtime music. Again, he is greatly known as being a pioneer composer as well as a performer and he is well known for the role that he took in paving the way for young black artists to reach all races in America (Berlin, 1996). As a result of his contribution in the industry, it has been noted that the very few who were aware of his greatness bowed their heads down in sorrow. The implication of this was that, a great man who was considered as the king of ragtime writers had passed on and he is also referred to as the person who gave America a genuine native kind of music (Reed,

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