Charles Templeton Music Museum Report

This past week I visited the Charles H. Templeton Music Museum during Mississippi State University’s Ragtime and Jazz Festival. The first time I visited this museum was my junior year of high school on a field trip while studying The Great Gatsby, but every time I visit the museum it is a brand new experience. Templeton's extensive collection of instruments, recordings, and sheet music allows for visitors to have an inside look on the progression of music throughout the late 1800’s and early 1900’s by emerging them into each particular musical time period. Charles H. Templeton himself stated, "This is one of the few collections, if not the only one, which carries through all of those changes. You started out with blues and then ragtime evolved from that, and then the Dixieland sound emerged and the big band, and from that came the forerunner of modern jazz.” Ragtime was the first Negro music to be heard outside of its place of origin, and with the creation of sheet music and piano rolls, it could be studied and performed by people all

Ernest Hogan, the first Ragtime composer to have his music published as sheet music, is credited for coining the word Ragtime. Ragtime was known for having a syncopated and “ragged” rhythm making it difficult for amatuer artist to immitate. From ragtime grew the very popular music style, Jazz. Jazz originally started in New Orleans, but as it grew and spread, it started to be influenced by regional and local musical cultures around the world. This led to the popularization of subgenres such as, Kansas City Jazz, Bebop, Cool Jazz, and eventually Jazz-Rock in the 1960’s. The different genres show how Jazz influenced music not only in the 1900’s but also present day music. Once Jazz became popularized among the states, many people forgot about ragtime. However, there have been many ragtime revivals since