 he Etcetera String Band, of Kansas City, was formed in the fall of 1973
with the idea of preserving and performing the instrumental string-oriented
dance music indigenous to the Midwest in the late 19th and early 20th century.
he Etcetera String Band has performed throughout the country, including
the two major ragtime festivals in St. Louis and Sedalia, Missouri, the
Goldenrod Showboat in St. Charles, Missouri, and other ragtime festivals
including Boulder, Colorado; Carthage, Missouri; Alexandria Bay, New York;
Niantic, Connecticut; Savannah, Georgia and Fresno, California. Their performances
also include the Festival of American Folklife in Washington D.C., by invitation
of the Smithsonian, guest artists at Mississippi State University, which
was televised on PBS, an artists-in-residence for the Lawton, Oklahoma
School District and a theatrical performance in A Stop On The River. for
Young Audiences in the Kansas City School District.
 he group has participated in events significant to ragtime's history
by helping to organize a ragtime festival in Kansas City and performing
at dedication ceremonies for the restored grave sites of ragtime composers
Arthur Marshall and James Scott, and at the ground breaking ceremony for
the Rosebud Cafe at the Scott Joplin State Historical Site in St. Louis.
hey have recorded four highly acclaimed albums. Their first album,
Harvest Hop, was chosen as the best ragtime recording of 1976 by the
Rag Times, a bimonthly ragtime publication. Their third album, Bonne Humeur, featured Afro-French and Creole dance music from Louisiana and
the Caribbean, a genre that they have researched in addition to ragtime.
Their fourth album, Fun On the Levee, consists of rags and cakewalks published
in towns along the Missouri river.
he Etcetera String Band has also been featured on a National Public
Radio special report on the black Kansas City Cakewalker "Doc Brown" and
were also featured on the PBS TV special The Cradle of Ragtime. Their valuable
research has been cited in ragtime textbooks such as This is Ragtime by
Terry Waldo, 1976, Rags and Ragtime by David A. Jason and Trebor Jay Tichenor,
1978, and Ragtime: Its History Composers and Music, edited by John Edward
Hasse, 1985. They were most recently recognized in Kansas City's Star Magazine.
 you may order the underlined books on-line just by clicking on the title |
he Etcetera String Band have done considerable research into the history
& performance style of this music, interviewing surviving relatives
of composers & performers and searching for 78's, sheet music &
piano rolls. The result is that they are probably the only group in the
world performing this genre in an authentic manner. |
