Ragtime Song

Ragtime song is the vocal counterpart of piano ragtime in the United States between the mid-1890s and the First World War: published popular songs whose accompaniments and melodies are ragged with syncopation. It grew out of the cakewalk and the so-called coon song — commercial songs trading in racist caricatures of Black life, which Black songwriters such as *Ernest Hogan* and *Bert Williams* both worked within and worked to transcend. Sold as sheet music and sung in vaudeville and minstrel shows, ragtime songs by *Irving Berlin* and others carried ragtime rhythm into the mainstream of American popular song.