Monday April 19th, 2021 8:08am
You could use whatever kind of stick you wanted, but it was still hard to get a turnover from John Grant Jr. when he was ragging the ball. (Photo: Tim Prothero, VintageLax)
American pianist Scott Joplin was known as the “King of Ragtime”. The Maple Leaf Rag, one of his most famous compositions, epitomizes the musical style whose defining characteristic is a type of syncopation in which melodic accents fall between metrical beats.
Once upon a time, in lacrosse rinks across Canada, improvisational virtuosos were playing out a different kind of maple leaf rag; theirs was known as the penalty kill rag, and it brought a blend of chaos and beauty to the floor like few other elements of Canada s national summer sport.