Below is a link to the Speech Accent Archive developed by George Mason University's Linguistics Program. This is an accent database containing sample readings by people with a wide variety of accents.
Try entering details about where your character might come from under Search. For example, there is a sample of a female Latvian accent that might be helpful for Little Girl!
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Founded in New York in 1905, the Explorers Club is a professional society created with the goal of promoting scientific exploration and field study. The Explorers Club is renowned for a series of Famous Firsts, accomplished by Club members or "those admitted after their achievements":
Around 1909 when Father is preparing for Peary's third expedition to the North Pole, Father says he was a past president of the Explorers Club. Before 1909, there would only have been two past presidents: Adolphus W. Greely, the founding president, and explorer Frederick A. Cook. Cook was expelled from the Club after both his claim that he was the first to reach the summit of Mount McKinley and that he was the first to reach the North Pole were discredited. Cook died in New Rochelle, New York, but other than that, shared little in common with Father, who according to the narrative of Ragtime, would have been president when Cook held the office. The Explorers Club is famous today for the Explorers Club flag, pictured above, which is carried on expeditions of explorers around the globe. However, Peary's expedition took place 9 years before the tradition of the flag began. The rich lady may not be aware that young girls in the slums are stolen everyday from their parents and sold into slavery. This quote from Tateh answers Evelyn Nesbit's question as to why he chooses to keep Little Girl on a leash in the slums of the Lower East Side. Child labor and child slavery has sadly always been in high demand because children could be paid less, could fix the small parts of machines that adults might not be able to reach, rarely formed unions, and were less likely to strike. The problem with employing children, according to E.L. Doctorow, "had to do only with their endurance". In the later hours of the day, children tended to lose their efficiency and were more likely to injure themselves.
Two factors increased child labor in the late 1800s. One, the influx of immigrants from Ireland in the 1840s and later southern and eastern Europe after 1880 brought a new supply of children who often came from rural communities in which child labor was a necessity. Two, the Industrial Revolution expanded the demand and opportunities for immigrant children. In 1900, 18 percent of American laborers were under 16 years old. In the southern cotton industry, the number rose to 25 percent under 15 years old, with half of these children under 12 years old. The National Child Labor Committee, formed in 1904, used mass political action, including pamphlets, mass mailing, and photography of factory conditions to lobby for political change. Despite measures of success with these actions, it largely depended on the political climate of America at the time. For example, during the Great Depression, child labor saw a steep decline primarily because workers wanted the few available jobs to go to adults, not children. Mam'zelle Champagne was the show at which Harry K. Thaw shot architect Stanford White. It premiered on June 25, 1906 and closed on September 1, 1906 after sixty performances. The otherwise unremarkable show ran that long largely due to publicity from the murder. The shooting occurred during the song linked below, called "I Could Love a Million Girls". In Ragtime, Younger Brother has a drawing of Charles Dana Gibson's "Women: The Eternal Question" pinned up in his room. Gibson is credited with the invention of the "Gibson girl" in 1890, a new standard for women as depicted in his drawings. The Gibson girl was taller than most other women, bold and independent while still feminine, poised and well-bred while still mischevious. Gibson's drawings were a feature of Life magazine for thirty years.
There were not many profile shots of Nesbit at the time, but based on the comparisons above, we can safely assume Gibson used Robert Eickemeyer Jr.'s photograph as reference for his famous drawing. Scholar Paula Uruburu notes that Nesbit also sat as a model for Gibson in person at least once. Evelyn had become an artist's model as early as thirteen years old, but her idealization as Gibson girl revealed her beauty to a much wider audience and fanned the flame of her vaudeville career. Coon songs are meant for minstrel shows. White men sing them in black face. This is called ragtime. Ragtime, like jazz, is a musical genre that is hard to define. The most agreed upon definition according to the Library of Congress is "a genre of musical composition for the piano, generally in duple meter and containing a highly syncopated treble lead over a rhythmically steady bass. A ragtime composition is usually composed of three or four contrasting sections or strains, each one being 16 or 32 measures in length." Some also observe that ragtime is often composed for an audience, not meant for dancing, unlike "coon songs" or cakewalks, other syncopated music seen in minstrel shows of the time. While cakewalks were often written in 2/4 or 6/8 meter, ragtime was only in duple meter. This led to "smaller and more gyrating dance steps", like animal dances such as the grizzly bear, bunny hug, turkey trot, and more.
The term "ragtime" is a contraction for "ragged time", describing a style of music in which the melody is broken up into short rhythms while a steady overall beat is played. This name predates the premier ragtime musicians of the day, such as Scott Joplin, Charles Hunter, or Tom Turpin. The origin of the syncopated beat that is so common in ragtime music is thought to be a surviving influence of African drumming and slave spirituals. Ragtime music found its heart in Missouri, specifically St. Louis because of the city's position on the river. Black entrepreneurs prospered in St. Louis, such as John L. Turpin who opened a saloon in 1887. Turpin's son, Tom, opened his own saloon in 1897; the same year, Tom composed "Harlem Rag" which became a ragtime standard that inspired future composers. Using the money earned from "Harlem Rag", Tom opened another saloon and brothel called Rosebud which became a destination for ragtime pianists hoping to learn from Tom Turpin himself. The pioneer spirit of Missouri combined with the constant flow of visitors to the riverside city made Missouri and Rosebud the capital of ragtime. Because ragtime required such technical skill to play, "classic rags" were often not bestsellers. A less subtle, more popular form of ragtime music filled vaudeville houses, music boxes, and piano-playing contests across the country. Critics looked down upon this overwhelming popularity; ragtime was called 'unmusical rot' by the American Federation of Musicians, 'virulent poison' by music magazine The Etude, and 'sacrilege' by the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. As jazz gained popularity around 1917, ragtime faded from the popular ear. A musical style that had defined an era became largely forgotten. The technical aspects of ragtime piano remained influential through 1920, creating its own genre called "novelty piano" or "novelty ragtime" by today's scholars. Find examples of ragtime music under Videos. Thank you to this page from the Library of Congress for helping me make sense of the musical lingo! Head here for a more detailed history of ragtime music. Jacob Riis was born in 1849 in Denmark and immigrated to the United States in 1870 at 21 years old. He could not find steady work and had to live at a police lodging house, a hotbed for crime and typhus fever. After several months of unemployment and homelessness, Riis contemplated suicide. Soon after this, in 1873, Riis found work with a news bureau, and later was recruited by South Brooklyn News in 1874. He became a police reporter in 1877 for the New York Tribune and the Associated Press where he worked for 23 years.
Riis was one of the first photographers to use flash powder to capture the conditions of the same lodging houses in which he once was forced to live, as well as the tenements in the Lower East Side where Tateh and Little Girl lived. He became a photojournalist for the Evening Sun in 1888 where he advocated for the poor through his photography. His Danish accent and his radical commitment to revealing the truth of the poor in New York made him an outsider even among reporters. Riis earned the nickname "the Emancipator of the Slums", in part through the impact of his book How the Other Half Lives which illuminated the sordid conditions of the tenements. How the Other Half Lives was one of the first books to successfully employ halftone reproduction of his photographs. How the Other Half Lives was one of many of Riis's books, but this book in particular gained popularity with the New York Police Commissioner and future 26th President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt accompanied Riis into the into the tenements of the city and even called Riis "the most useful citizen of New York." His photographs were largely forgotten after his death until the negatives were found and donated to the city of New York. Head over to Images for examples of his photography. As seen in the Ragtime novel when Evelyn Nesbit visits the poor, The I.W.W. was founded in Chicago in 1905. The goal of the organization was for all workers to be united as a class to abolish the wage system. The motto of the I.W.W. is "An Injury to One is an Injury to All". Leaders believed the most effective way to gain power was through strikes, propaganda, boycotts, and their controversial strategy of sabotage. Sabotage as defined by the I.W.W. does not mean the destruction of property or machinery. It is the collective withdrawal of efficiency by workers at the point of production, also called "direct action". When other leaders began to disagree with these strategies, the I.W.W. split in 1908. By 1912, the I.W.W. had over 50,000 members and was involved in over 150 strikes. They are sometimes known as the "singing union" because of their iconic Little Red Songbook. Another icon of the I.W.W. is a black cat called the "sabo-tabby" (from the word sabotage). This was one of many "silent agitator" graphics used as symbols for workers to communicate. Some have suggested that the adoption of the word "cat" by beat poets and jazz musicians comes from the I.W.W.'s use of the word. Members of the I.W.W. were called Wobblies. There are a few theories as to how they got their name:
Read a much more in depth history of the I.W.W. here. Rules of Etiquette, paraphrased from various sources:
On page 112 of Ragtime, E.L. Doctorow credits Emma Goldman as the author of a pamphlet on family limitation that was actually authored by Margaret Sanger in 1914. The original pamphlet is linked on the Readings page of this website. On Goldman's national tour, she helped distribute copies of the pamphlet about contraceptives and other information Sanger felt women had the right to know. At this time, the distribution, publication, and possession of information about or devices or medications for "unlawful" abortion and contraception were punishable by law under the Comstock Act of 1873. Abortions themselves were illegal and morally condemned. It was thought to be the man's decision if and when to have a baby, a standard Sanger felt was ridiculous considering it would be the woman carrying the baby. Sanger went on to found the American Birth Control League which became Planned Parenthood. The working woman can use direct action by refusing to supply the market with children to be exploited, by refusing to populate the earth with slaves. |
Dramaturgy for the Ragtime musical and novel.© Eliza Pillsbury, 2018. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Eliza Pillsbury with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. Categories
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