ABSTRACT
Harlem's brand of ragtime was not made to accompany dancing or seduction; its only aim was aural delight. Its natural habitats were not the concert hall or the ballroom, but the small club and the parlor social. The music flourished where it could feed, and feed off of, high spirits. Players and listeners urged one another to exuberance, each relishing what the other had brought to the party. Through improvisation—his own or that of a rival—a player might find devices to be used in composition, but introspection came later. The first order of business was to lift the spirit and keep it high.
