Ragtime - Lost connections

Pianist Donna Coleman traces the legacy of Manuel Saumell, Louis Moreau Gottschalk and Ignacio Cervantes in that most American of musical genres: ragtime. By weaving the visions of the cultural crosscurrents between Cuba and the United States from 1830 to 1920, Coleman highlights Gottachalk’s African musical idioms, Saumell’s habaneras and Cervantes’s Cuban dances, and establishes a direct connection with Scott Joplin and ragtime music.