拉格泰姆（Ragtime）是一种原始的音乐风格，1897年至1918年间十分普及。其主要特点特点是切分音，“衣衫褴褛”的节奏。它最初是作为舞蹈音乐，在圣路易斯和新奥尔良年美国黑人社区的红灯区十分流行。欧内斯特·霍根是帮助拉格泰姆发展音乐风格的关键先驱。拉格泰姆风格一词的使用也被归功于霍根。拉格泰姆是在约翰·菲利普·苏萨带动流行的进行曲的基础上，吸收了非洲音乐的复节奏进行改编。拉格泰姆作曲家斯科特·乔普林，借由1899年发表的“枫叶拉格”和之后“艺人”等一系列作品出名。在发表之后的12年内，“枫叶拉格”依然强烈影响随后拉格泰姆作曲家的旋律线条、和声和节拍模式。

Ragtime – also spelled rag-time or rag time – is a musical genre that enjoyed its peak popularity between 1895 and 1918. Its cardinal trait is its syncopated, or "ragged", rhythm. The genre has its origins in African-American communities like St. Louis years before being published as popular sheet music for piano. Ernest Hogan (1865–1909) was a pioneer of ragtime music and was the first to compose ragtime into sheet music. The composition was called "LA Pas Ma LA" and it was released in 1895. Hogan has also been credited for coining the term ragtime. The term is actually derived from his hometown "Shake Rag " in Bowling Green, Kentucky. Ben Harney, who is also Kentucky native has often been credited for introducing the music to the mainstream public. His first ragtime composition "You've been a good old wagon but you done broke" helped popularize the musical genre. The composition was published in 1895 but released in 1896. Ragtime was also a modification of the march made popular by John Philip Sousa, with additional polyrhythms coming from African music. The ragtime composer Scott Joplin (ca. 1868–1917) became famous through the publication of the "Maple Leaf Rag" (1899) and a string of ragtime hits such as "The Entertainer" (1902), although he was later forgotten by all but a small, dedicated community of ragtime aficionados until the major ragtime revival in the early 1970s. For at least 12 years after its publication, "Maple Leaf Rag" heavily influenced subsequent ragtime composers with its melody lines, harmonic progressions or metric patterns.