In central southwest China where the Yangtze and Jialing rivers meet, is a city that feels like it's been ripped out of a game of Q*Bert meets Chutes and Ladders. One moment you're strolling along the ground-floor of a massive square, only to find that you're actually standing dozens of floors above another tier. This otherworldly metropolis is Chongqing. While it may not have the same name recognition as other Chinese cities such as Shanghai,
"Many found the music offensive, the dancing objectionable, and the popularity of both with young people verging on a mental health crisis." So writes music historian Susan C. Cook about ragtime, the heavily syncopated ancestor of jazz that arose in the late 1800s. Like all things, ragtime's subversiveness faded over time, and, a century later, the works of Scott Joplin and other practitioners had been relegated to carnivals and fairs, their jaunty piano melodies now evoking quaint notions of old-timey fun.