This Joint Is Stompin'!

Comments (0) By David Cotner Thursday, Jul 5 2012

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Old Town Music Hall

140 Richmond St.
El Segundo, CA 90245

Category: Theaters

Region: South Bay

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It's that time of year again: The 37th Annual Ragtime Festival, with pianists Alex Hassan, Cathy Craig, Frederick Hodges and John Reed-Torres, has since 1975 (!) turned people on to that jauntiest of all possible piano music. While you might think it's a polite and corny kind of music to sit down and listen to, it has its basis in the phenomenon of marginalized African-American music finding its way into mainstream acceptance — not the easiest of all possible things to openly welcome then. This isn't to say that the strides made by ragtime composers such as Jelly Roll Morton and Scott Joplin — whose ragtime smash "The Entertainer" is the one most people know — were always easy. Working in the same cultural marketplace as Ernest Hogan's hit "All Coons Look Alike to Me" must have been extortionately galling. The modern-day revival, from 1973 to 1981 — between the years that movies The Sting and Ragtime were released — were completely insane years for the genre, a weird but welcome relief from disco and punk. Stomps, cakewalks and rags: They're all here tonight — but for how much longer, as ragtime's fans pass away, one never knows. Old Town Music Hall, 140 Richmond St., El Segundo; Sat., July 7, 2:30 & 8:15 p.m.; Sun., July 8, 2:30 p.m.; $20. (310) 322-2592, oldtownmusichall.wordpress.com/upcoming-schedules.
Sat., July 7, 2:30 & 8:15 p.m.; Sun., July 8, 2:30 p.m., 2012