LyricMeaning

Prologue: Ragtime
Broadway Cast Recording & Stephen Flaherty

In 1902, Father built a house at the crest of

The Brodview Avenue hill in New Rochelle, New York

And it seemed for some years thereafter

That all the family's days would be warm and fair


The skies were blue and hazy

Rarely a storm, barely a chill

The afternoons were lazy

Everyone warm, everything still


And there was distant music

Simple and somehow sublime

Giving the nation a new syncopation

The people called it ragtime


Father was well-off, very well-off

His considerable income was derived from

The manufacture of fireworks and bunting

Other accouterments of patriotism

Father was also something of an amateur explorer


The house on the hill in New Rochelle was Mother's domain

She took pleasure in making it comfortable for the men of her family

And often told herself how fortunate she was to be so protected

And provided for by her husband


Mother's younger brother worked at Father's fireworks factory

He was a genius at explosives, he was also a young man

In search of something to believe in

His sister wondered when he would find it


Grandfather had been a professor of Greek and Latin

Now retired and living with his daughter and her family

He was thoroughly irritated by everything


The days were gently tinted

Lavender pink, lemon and lime

Ladies with parasols

Fellows with tennis balls


There were gazebos

And there were no Negroes

And everything was ragtime

Listen to that ragtime


In Harlem, men and women of color forgot their troubles

And danced and reveled to the music of Coalhouse Walker, Jr

This was a music that was theirs

And no one else's

One young woman thought Coalhouse played just for her

Her name was Sarah


Booker T. Washington was the most famous Negro in the country

He counseled friendship between the races

And spoke of the promise of the future

He had no patience for Negroes who lived less than exemplary lives


Ladies with parasols

Fellows with tennis balls

There were no Negroes

And there were no immigrants


In Latvia, a man dreamed of a new life for his little girl

It would be a long journey, a terrible one

He would not lose her as he had her mother

His name was Tateh, he never spoke of his wife

The little girl was all he had now

Together, they would escape


Houdini

Look it's Houdini

Ohh aah

Ohh aah


Harry Houdini was one immigrant

Who made and art of escape


He was a headliner in the top Vaudeville circuits

Ich bin die Mutter des grossen Houdinis


He mad his Mother proud

But for all his achievements

He knew he was only an illusionist

He wanted to believe there was more


Hello, sonny

Warn the Duke

What did you say?


And there was distant music

Changing the tune, changing the time

Giving the nation a new syncopation


Certain men make a country great

They can't help it

At the very apex of the American Pyramid

That's the very tip-top


Like Pharoahs reincarnate, stood J.P. Morgan

And Henry Ford

All men are born equal

But the cream rises to the top


Let me at those sons of bitches

These men are the demons who are sucking your very souls dry

I hate them

Someone should arrest that woman


The radical anarchist Emma Goldman

Fought against the ravages of American capitalism

As she watched her fellow immigrants' hopes

Turn to despair on the Lower East Side


But America was watching another drama

Evelyn Nesbit was the most beautiful woman in America

If she wore her hair in curls, every woman wore her hair in curls

Her lover was the eminent architect, Stanford White

Designer of the Pennsylvania Station on 33rd street


Her husband, the eccentric millionaire, Harry K. Thaw

Was a violent man

After her husband shot her lover

Evelyn became the biggest attraction in Vaudeville since Tom Thumb


Bang

Bang

Bang


And although the newspapers called the shooting

'The crime of the century', Goldman knew it was only 1906

And there were ninety-four years to go


And there was music playing

Catching a nation in its prime

Beggar and millionaire

Everyone, everywhere

Moving to the ragtime


And there was distant music

Skipping a beat, singing a dream

A strange, insistent music

Putting out heat, picking up steam

The sound of distant thunder

Suddenly starting to climb


It was the music of something beginning

An era exploding, a century spinning

In riches and rags and in rhythm and rhyme

The people called it ragtime

Ragtime, ragtime, ragtime


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Lyrics by Broadway Cast Recording & Stephen Flaherty

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