Music history of the United States in the late 19th century

Originally associated primarily with poor African Americans, ragtime was quickly denounced as degenerate by conservatives and the classically trained establishment.

In spite of the denigration, however, the style continued to gain widespread popularity and became mainstream; it was adopted by Tin Pan Alley at the start of the 20th century.

Similar parodies of Africans had been popular during the late 18th century in England, and they spread across the Atlantic through the efforts of comedians like Charles Mathews, Thomas Rice and George Washington Dixon.

Though their styles were no more similar to actual slave practices than those of the white minstrels, these groups billed themselves as more "authentic" and grew popular.

Composers included E. P. Christy, Daniel Decatur Emmett and Thomas Rice; the latter's "Jump Jim Crow" was an immensely popular song, so well known and widely played that foreign leaders mistook it for the American national anthem.

Other songs typically performed in blackface included "Camptown Races", "Old Dan Tucker", "Dixie", "Old Folks at Home", "Old Black Joe", "Turkey in the Straw" and "O Dem Golden Slippers".

After the War ended, many of the bands dispersed and their members surely influenced musical activities in their home towns.

The motion picture "The Music Man" is based upon detailed research into the rise of small city bands in the midwest.

Prior to military and later community bands, little organized music making was available in small towns due to cost, and many other factors.

Cost, changing musical tastes, and the introduction of radio and record players undercut public interest in community bands.

The Slovenian polka master, Frankie Yankovic, has had perhaps more crossover success than these other stars; his period of greatest popularity was in the 1940s.

Jenny Lind, Ole Bull, Enrico Caruso, and Oscar Wilde made highly publicized tours often to great acclaim.

In the later decades of the 19th century, the music industry became dominated by a group of publishers and song-writers in New York City that came to be known as Tin Pan Alley.