By EMILY JONES
Starkville Daily News

If the sound of a syncopated piano “rag” gets your toes tapping and hips swinging, you have a treat in store.
Enthusiasm was high this week when leaders from MSU and Starkville met to plan the first annual Ragtime Festival to be held on the Mississippi State University campus March 23-25, 2007.  
“This is a great fit for our area since we now have the Templeton Music Museum at MSU,” said Chip Templeton, the son of  the late Charles H. Templeton whose vast collection of musical instruments, sheet music and recordings are now housed in the university’s Mitchell Memorial Library.  There is a heavy influence of ragtime music in the collection, he noted.  
“The syncopated rhythm of Ragtime music was the foundation for jazz and the blues and is considered the root of American music.  Its  history is closely linked with Mississippi history,” he continued.  “Our vision for this festival is to produce an event to give the museum more exposure while reflecting positively on the university and Starkville.
MSU Dean Frances Coleman concurred, referring to the newly opened museum as one of the best kept secrets in Mississippi.   “MUW has the Eudora Welty event and Ole Miss has the Faulkner conference.  This will give our university an identity which is uniquely ours.”
As a secondary objective, Coleman suggested the event would enable the Mitchell Memorial Library to become a member of the American Research Library  (ARL) which would bring widespread notoriety to the university.
Organizers plan to make the festival an annual event, growing it a little each year.  
The opportunity to branch out into other areas such as dance, fashion, and concessions are practically unlimited, said Stephen Cunetto, who has performed much of the advanced work on the festival.  He and Chip Templeton attended a Ragtime festival in California earlier this year to make contacts with performers and get ideas for the local event.
Commitments from internationally renowned performers have already been obtained.  Among them are Jeff Barnhardt, Mimi Blais, Neville Dickie, Tracy Doyle, Sue Keller, Richard Zimmerman and David Refkin.  
The group of some 30 organizers were divided into committees to continue developing ideas.  Initial plans are to hold concerts each evening and festival seminars and tours during the day.  A festival store will sell cds, t-shirts, and posters and a “Talking Machine Company Cafe” will provide refreshments.
The genre of “Ragtime” music was first made popular by such artists as Scott Joplin and Jelly Roll Morton.  it was at its peak during the late 19th and early years of the 20th centuries.  
Ragtime found its characteristic expression in formally structured piano compositions, the accented left-hand beat opposed in the right hand by a fast, bouncing melody that gave the music its powerful forward impetus.
 The rhythm and structure of ragtime were important influences on the development of the entire swing movement according to Michael Brown, head of the MSU Music Department.
“Ragtime  has had several periods of revival in popularity and is still being composed today,” Brown said.  
It began as dance music in popular years before being published as popular sheet music for piano. Being a modification of the then popular march, it was usually written in 2/4 or 4/4 time (meter).  Brown said a composition in this style was called "ragged " and it was later corrupted to “ragtime.”
As jazz went on to develop other styles, ragtime faded and was nearly forgotten. But some enthusiasts who were exploring the roots of jazz began a ragtime revival in the 1940's. The revival gained momentum very slowly until, in 1973, the movie "The Sting" reintroduced ragtime to the general public.
Classic rags, particularly Joplin's "The Entertainer", became once again a part of the standard band and piano repertoire.
Ragtime continues to be popular with both musicians and audiences and has at last gained widespread respect and recognition as an art that produced works of true genius.
The Charles H. Templeton Museum showcases products from the Victor Talking machine company along with the famous Victor logo, Nipper the dog.  
Visitors may listen to the handsome mahogany Acolian Orchestrelle Player reed organ as it plays its collection of paper rolls and listen to music as was presented when the first recordings were released.
For more information about touring the Charles H. Templeton, Sr. Music Museum call 325-6623 or visit the website library.msstate.edu/templeton.