What is a rag?

(Musically speaking)

Initially I just wanted to post Sarah Cahill’s performance of “Be Kind To One Another (Rag)”. It’s a beautiful peace that I’ve listened to a fair amount recently, the world being what it is. I think it does a beautiful job of carrying multiple moods at the same time. It keeps moving forward steadily, while also hovering over unexpected notes of grief or joy or hope. And as the pace seems to slow, there is a liveliness to the music that never entirely dissipates.

And sometimes the mood and the pace and everything else click together in brief unity, before separating again and revealing the complexity of emotion. It gives brief form to feelings that are hard to grasp.

But I realized that I don’t quite know what a rag is. I could confidently say it was related to (or maybe the same thing as) ragtime. Which is jazzy. And old. Definitely old. Other facts about it were less clear and mostly just words and names … Joplin … Maple Leaf … syncopation … fixin’-to-die … The Sting … player pianos? Maybe?

So I did a little research and promptly got overwhelmed. It is the precursor to Jazz. That’s for sure. And Scott Joplin was the king of it. The rest gets blurry, partly due to my lack of musical understanding, partly because it’s just not all that clear.

So I reached out to a friend who has the enviable skill of being able to understand and explain music. I asked him – What is a rag? (Followed by – Is Country Joe & The Fish’s “I Feel Like I’m Fixin’ to Die Rag” a rag? Short answer – not really*)

He explained ragtime as best as anyone can, with words like “duple” and “antecedent/consequent phrases” – I won’t trouble you with it, but it made enough sense when I was reading it.

More importantly, he made the point, “it’s one of the issues when a kind of music is made in the vernacular world. The same thing happened with Bill Monroe and Bluegrass. He made this new thing and then spent the rest of his life saying other people’s bluegrass wasn’t really bluegrass and that he doesn’t know why not except that he knows it when hears it.”

Poor guy.

So it can be hard to put your finger on. If only because the music evolved in many different directions, but it all retains this feeling of movement. And the best pieces can contain great depth of emotion. A somber piece can can contain notes of joy, while a very spirited piece can have a undercurrent of sadness.

Any effort to really hold on to a feeling is bound to be unsuccessful – the music keeps moving. It doesn’t care if it’s ragtime.

Perhaps there is something within the form that speaks to our efforts to grasp that which is beyond us – Terry Riley has another piece called “Premonition Rag” and William Bolcom has the absolutely beautiful Three Ghost Rags: Graceful Ghost, The Poltergeist, & Dream Shadows.

Emotions, music, mood, momentum – it can be hard to really grasp these things in a concrete way. But you don’t have to! Just Be Kind to One Another. Rag or otherwise.

*The word “rag” seems to have been thrown around a lot in the 60’s, with a variety of meanings. Country Joe’s song was recorded specifically for a magazine he produced called Rag Baby which was not about ragtime, unless ragtime’s definition now involves the 60’s leftist counterculture. Searching the internet for “Is ‘I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-To-Die Rag’ a rag?” is tough. There is also a chance that nobody cares.