Kansas City KANSAS: Cultural Rhythms in Ragtime and Jazz: How a small African American community influenced American music Paperback – January 25, 2025

This is an ethnomusicology study of Kansas City, Kansas which serves as a tool to examine how a small diverse community in Kansas influenced America with its music. There has been very little research on the unique role early KCK played in the history of ragtime and jazz. According to Tuskegee University President, inventor and U.S. Presidential Advisor Booker T. Washington (1856-1915), the first African American community in Kansas City, Kansas (KCK) was “number one in the United States in organization and management.” KCK was a role model with many successful businesses, churches, hospitals, scholars, home ownership, and especially secondary and postsecondary schools in the last decade of the 19th and early 20th Centuries. Three ethnic groups, the Wyandot Native Tribe, white New Englanders and former African American slaves came together to create one of the finest communities in the United States. The key learning outcome of this post-Civil War community was music education which culminated in the first historically black college west of the Mississippi, Western University at Quindaro. At its zenith Western U. was mostly financed and directed by the local African American Episcopal Church of KCK. For their part, Kansas City, Missouri musicians created a successful stomp jazz and big band jazz scene from 1917 to 1940 that absorbed KCK’s music contributions into its “Goin to Kansas City” paradigm. To distinguish KCK's advancements there are 50 biographical sketches about KCK musicians who were either born, lived-in or worked in KCK for part if not all their lives. Most were African American musicians because ragtime and jazz have deep roots in African American culture, but three are White and one is Hispanic. The four historic music periods are treated here as the pre-ragtime era from 1856 to 1893; the ragtime era from 1893 to 1917; the early jazz era from 1917 to 1929; and the modern jazz era from 1930 to the present. The last period is essentially an addendum that by extrapolation reveals how modern jazz musicians from KCK connect the “Dottes” back to the first three eras of KCK music. The main purpose of the book is to differentiate the music history of Kansas City Kansas from Kansas City Missouri. Read more