Monday Music: Solace - A Mexican Serenade (Scott Joplin)

The first time I heard the music of Scott Joplin was when the 1973 film, The Sting, came to the theater. Joshua Rifkin had revived Joplin's ragtime music with his recordings just three years earlier. "Solace," is an achingly beautiful masterpiece that conveys a sense of stillness, perhaps even a quiet longing.

The song was recently used on the Star Trek: Picard series. In the episode, "Stardust City Rag," we hear the song played at the keyboard as the camera panned through some sort of intergalactic bar scene in a locale that is rife with danger. A little later in the episode, we hear Picard tell former Star Fleet officer Seven of Nine who is now a vigilante ranger, "There is no solace in revenge."

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