Ragtime

1. A form of ethnic piano music from the early 20th century that is indigenous to the United States, and is characterized by a syncopated melody over a steady bass and chord line constituting a duple rhythm (two or a multiple of two beats per measure).
2. As in Piano Ragtime or Piano Rag, which is a genre of syncopated music based on a march form that usually consists of three or four repeated distinct sixteen measure sections in both tonic and subdominant keys in the sectional form of A A B B A C C D D or a common variation thereof such as A A B B A C C B¹ B¹.
3. A genre of popular music based on marches and Afro-American/Latin rhythms that was prevalent in the early 20th century. The term is inclusive of most popular music of 1900 into the late 1910s.