Ragtime

Sunday
It was a long service at church this morning. There was a “Moment for Mission”, featuring a lady from Catholic Charities talking about refugees. This was the organization that our church worked with to be able to welcome a refugee family last year. What she had to say was very interesting, but it certainly lasted much longer than a “moment”! I wasn’t timing her, but someone said she talked for over 15 minutes, and then we had the sermon after that! However, it certainly got you thinking about the world-wide refugee crisis that exists at present. The long service meant our bible study which follows had to be curtailed, since it was running into people’s lunch times. Also, we were going to be back at church for 3pm for a concert. It was an extremely windy day, and as we were sitting in the breakfast room having our lunch, I was looking outside, and suddenly realized I couldn’t see our bird feeders - the wind had blown the pole over. When Roger came to look at it later, he realized that the metal pole was actually rather corroded at the bottom, and had in fact broken off, aided no doubt by the wind.
The concert featured the Newport Ragtime band. Newport is a suburb of Greater Cincinnati across the river in Kentucky, and the ensemble is an offshoot of the Northern Kentucky Symphony. Their program was one they do for schools and other organizations in honour of Black History month, and the conductor talked about each of the composers and artists whose music they played, accompanied by a visual presentation. Considered the first completely American music, ragtime was popular towards the end of the 19th century and into the first two decades of the 20th century, roughly 1893 to 1917, and was a precursor to jazz.
Ragtime developed in African American communities throughout the southern parts of the Midwest, particularly Saint Louis. Perhaps the most famous composer of ragtime was Scott Joplin, and another was Jelly Roll Morton, and both of them were featured on the program. Unfortunately I didn’t get a good picture of the ensemble, so instead I took a photo of an exhibit one of our choir members (who plays in a couple of bands himself) had setup in the parkour, where there was a reception afterwards.
When we left church, we were pleasantly surprised to see that the sun had come out, so we went back home to change our shoes, then went for a walk at Sharon Woods.