It’s that time of year again! Time to learn how to dance the one-step, listen to piano and banjo rhythms and take the cake in the traditional Cakewalk! It’s time for the 6^th annual Ragtime Street Fair in Greenfield Village!

A crowd favorite, Ragtime celebrates a music genre completely unique to America and it sure does it in style! All through the village, you can listen to musicians grooving to traditional ragtime tunes and even learn how everyone got down back in the day with lessons from our pros! You can also check out a silent film, “Lizzies of the Field,” complete with a live piano accompaniment. You definitely don’t get the chance to see that everyday!

Don’t miss out on the chance to march in the Dixieland Jazz parade! Each evening, travel down Main Street complete with music and fun to celebrate the end of ragtime and the beginning of the big band jazz era! Then, relax on the village green and listen to performances by the River Raisin Ragtime Revue and the Tartarsauce Traditional Jazz Band!

One of the most unique features of the street fair is the food, all based off of 19th century festivals. Not only is it delicious, it definitely is not what you would see at a carnival today! To tell us more about the amazing treats waiting for us, we asked Greg Harris, the manager of food services for THF, to tell us all the delectable dishes that will be served this weekend!

Like any musician can tell you, there is nothing like good harmony. When the right notes come together at the right time, the results can be perfect. The same applies to food too – there’s good harmony in cold, refreshing lemonade on a warm summer afternoon or the buttery crunch as you bite into fresh, sweet, corn-on-the-cob boiled over a wood fire.  Luckily this weekend we have both kinds – harmony you can hear and taste!

Right in the heart of the weekend’s activities celebrating the hot sounds of ragtime music, an orchestra of food awaits your enjoyment under sunny yellow tents. We’ll be selling some of the season’s freshest offerings and classic summertime staples to keep you humming all weekend long.

When you’re here win the Cake Walk, but skip the prize – instead, tear into one of our hot, sugar-cinnamon covered fried dough’s made right before you by our talented chefs. Shake a leg to the Charleston and then buy one of ours;  smoky, barbeque turkey legs as big as a banjo are kept hot on the grill all day long. You can sample a cold Heritage Brew Beer, munch on some salty-sweet kettle corn or just grab some summer-ripe Michigan produce from the back of 1930’s produce truck. Yes, there’s something tasty for every note on the scale at the Ragtime Street Fair, so stroll on by the food tents this weekend and see how delicious good harmony can be!

We are all so excited for this weekend to kick off! What are you excited to experience at the Ragtime Street Festival this weekend? Do you have a favorite street food treat from the village?

Marie Stawasz, our intern in the Media & Film Relations department, recently learned a few ragtime dance steps to prepare you for this weekend’s big event in Greenfield Village, the Ragtime Street Fair, and Marketing intern Jacquelyn Piechotte compiled a fun video to show you, too! This dynamic event celebrates the food and fun of the era that defined ragtime music, a precursor to the jazz era. Whether the music sweeps you onto the dance floor, or the scent of freshly baked cherry crisp whisks you to the food tent, there are plenty of exciting things to enjoy this weekend at the Ragtime Street Fair!

“People can say what they like about rag-time. The Waltz is beautiful, the Tango is graceful, the Brazilian Maxixe is unique. One can sit quietly and listen with pleasure to them all; but when a good orchestra plays a ‘rag’ one has simply got to move.” – from Modern Dancing by Mr. & Mrs. Vernon Castle, 1914

As I walked up the main stairway of Lovett Hall into the Grand Ballroom, I could feel the pulse of dancing feet above. Nearly 50 members of The Henry Ford’s staff joined Nira Pullin, movement coach and musical theater choreographer at Wayne State University, for an evening of ragtime dance lessons in preparation for the fourth annual Ragtime Street Fair, held this weekend, July 24-25 in Greenfield Village.

Pullin taught them the basics of the most popular dance of ragtime – the One Step – so that they can teach our visitors as well during the event. This simple and popular dance requires each participant to take only one step to each count of the music, making it easy to stay in time with the tune.

Deemed as America’s original popular music, ragtime music can be described as having an uneven or ragged rhythm. Musicians such as Scott Joplin and Charles L. Johnson integrated European music with syncopated African and Latin American rhythms to create a unique sound that became popular in the 1890s and paved the way for music of the swing and rock & roll eras.

Now that you know your history, click on the link here to watch a video teaching the One Step – then join us this weekend at Ragtime Street Fair and show off your fancy footwork!

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In this celebration at Greenfield Village, approximately 250 children participate in versions of traditional May Day festivities. Some children carry arches of flowers, some are in costume, some are part of the queen’s court. We witness the crowning of the Queen of the May. Various old-fashioned dances are performed for the queen and her court, as taught by dance instructor and head of Greenfield Village Schools, Benjamin Lovett. (My favorite is the Jockey Dance!) Dances are also performed around a Maypole, and all participants take part in dancing the quadrille. The film closes with older children dancing in the Lovett Hall ballroom and an aerial view of Greenfield Village.

Noting that the festival was May 24, this archivist was somewhat surprised at finding it not uncommon for May Festivals to be held later in May, rather than on May Day, May 1 (having nothing more to go on than vague memories of elementary school Maypole dances–not to mention different connotations of the day, such as observances for the Labor movement and disaster preparedness for libraries, archives, and museums). Presumably this timeframe was built around when the weather got nicer in northern climes? Or perhaps it was the influence of the Dutch and later African American observances of Pinkster celebrated in late May or early June, some of which included Maypoles, and which, though tied linguistically to the church year–Pinkster deriving from the Dutch for “Pentecost”–were quite obviously also linked to the seasons and growing conditions. On the other hand, May Day and May Festival observances in Europe seem not to have been rigidly fixed to May 1. Did they party the whole month long? Sometimes they did, it would seem (with a translation into modern English courtesy of Wikipedia), or perhaps mixed and merged practices with other similar festivals.

Although the upcoming Memorial Day is a time of reverent, even somber, remembrance for many, let us also look to the joys of spring and warmer weather.

Clara Bryant Ford is famously known as “The Believer” for her devotion to her husband, Henry Ford. In fact, it was Henry who gave her this nickname. Throughout their fifty-nine years of marriage, she was Henry’s supporter, confidante, and advisor. The name was bestowed during their early years together, when Clara ran their household on a shoestring budget and endured frequent moves, while Henry tinkered and toiled perfecting his vehicles and pouring their money into attempts to establish a profitable business.

Backing up just a bit, here are a few lines of romantic verse that Henry penned to Clara on the Valentine’s Day before their engagement in 1886:

May Floweretts of love around you bee twined.
And the Sunshine
of peace Shed its joys o’e your Minde
From one tht Dearly loves you

(As quoted in Ford Bryan’s Clara: Mrs. Henry Ford, p. 27. The original letter is preserved in Henry and Clara Ford’s personal papers housed at the Benson Ford Research Center.)

After Ford Motor Company became a success, they lived more comfortably, finally putting down roots in their estate, Fair Lane, that they had built along the Rouge River in Dearborn.

Clara always enjoyed gardening, especially flowers. At Fair Lane, she installed a five-acre rose garden. Here, she and Henry are strolling together on their grounds near the riverbank.

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The two were also fond of old-fashioned dancing, having gone to many dances together during their courting days. Later on, they held frequent ballroom dances around Dearborn. Here, Henry and Clara can be seen kicking up their heels in the barn at Henry Ford’s birthplace.

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Two excellent sources for learning more about Clara Ford and Henry and Clara’s life together are the book Clara: Mrs. Henry Ford by Ford R. Bryan (Dearborn: Ford Books, 2001) and sections of the book The People’s Tycoon: Henry Ford and the American Century by Steven Watts (New York: Vintage Books, 2006)