Acorn

Issue date: 2/8/08 Section: Arts and Leisure

Media Credit: Drew Cranisky Visiting Professor of Classics James Tatum lectures the audience about ragtime music before playing piano tunes from the era at the Dorothy Young Center for the Arts Concert Hall.

For someone who isn't in the field of professional music, Professor James Tatum did an impressive job on his "Ragging the Classics" piano performance, which was held Wednesday in the Dorothy Young Center for the Arts Concert Hall.

According to Tatum, the term "ragging" is a process in which one takes a "steady rhythm and plays it off the beat."

Tatum played several excerpts and full-length songs composed by Europeans and Americans of the ragtime era.

These works are featured in the novel "The Autobiography of an Ex-colored Man" written by James Weldon Johnson in 1912.

Nearly all of the songs inspired a wide array of emotions. They started off calm and gentle, then erupted into a plethora of deep, angry notes.

"I thought it was an excellent lecture that gave an insight into ragtime music that was fascinating," Clay Zemelman ('08) said.

"It was honestly a lot better than I thought it would be. I didn't know what 'Ragging the Classics' meant but now I'm actually glad I decided to come," Lauren Downey ('08) said.

"His playing was pretty good, but I thought what was really interesting about it was the fact that he used the music to transition from topic to topic...and how it all tied into his themes of celebrating race....He just seemed like a really nice guy who was really easy to listen to, a charming academic," Chrissie Harms ('08) said.

Tatum didn't just play the piano. He also told jokes, had the audience sing and linked everything together into a lesson about Black History month.

When he played with the black and white keys on the piano, he mentioned Stevie Wonder, who once asked: "If ebony and ivory can be together on my piano, then why can't we all be together in this world?"

At one point, the mood of the audience suddenly turned from joyous to somber.

Tatum had played a string of animated excerpts, when he started to read a passage from the Johnson novel.

Continued...

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