My older sister was at the cusp of new wave and I had older brothers from my father's first marriage who were rock 'n' roll guys so I was exposed to a lot of popular culture.
Ragtime has about the same amount of respect as comics. And in a way they're similar art forms. Ragtime is highly compositional and the emotion in the music is built in whereas in jazz a lot of that emotion comes from the way it's performed.
