Dr. Dominique-René de Lerma Contributes a Bibliography and Works list to the Scott Joplin page at AfriClassical.com

One of Scott Joplin's compositions in the Works list was written about an actual news event involving a planned collision of two trains:

The great Crush collision march, for piano (1896).  Temple TX: John R. Fuller, 1896. Duration: 4:12.  Dedication: Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railway.  [see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crush,_Texas.]

Scott Joplin (c.1867-1917)

 was an African American Composer 

and Pianist of Ragtime and Classical

 Music who wrote three operas 

and is featured at AfriClassical.com 

Dr. Dominique-René de Lerma, the renowned musicologist who is principal adviser to AfriClassical.com, has used his many years of research to contribute a Bibliography and Works list which have been added to the Scott Joplin page. He explains the need for a Bibliography to the composer's career:

Dr. Dominique-René de Lerma:

The arrival of ragtime and Scott Joplin came on the wake of Antonín Dvořák's visit and his stimulus to develop an American musical language by looking at the spiritual, and the agony of American cultural inferiority complex.  It was during his life that Samuel Coleridge-Taylor's visit and the birth of Black musical theater in New York.  The United States saw two world's fairs during this time, one to commemorate the 400^th anniversary of Columbus' voyage (as well as an assurance that Chicago was rising after the 1871 fire) and one of the centennial of the Louisiana Purchase. While the blues and minstrel shows already existed, Anglo-Americans were witnessing the global impact of a new music in ragtime as one element toward the liberation of Black musical creativity.  Quite apart from Joplin's value as an original force in music, his life reflected on all of these contemporary phenomena, thus adding to the importance of bibliographic reference.