Ragtime, propulsively syncopated musical style, one forerunner of jazz and the primary fashion of American popular song from about 1899 to 1917. Ragtime advanced inside the gambling of honky-tonk pianists along the Mississippi and Missouri rivers in the ultimate decades of the 19th century.
Ragtime -- A style of musical composition for the piano, generally in duple meter and containing a particularly syncopated treble lead over a rhythmically steady bass. A ragtime composition is commonly composed 3 or 4 contrasting sections or traces, each one being sixteen or 32 measures in duration.