Scott Joplin's Solace is a wonderful example of musical hybrid. Joplin was of course one of the kings of ragtime music, but here is something that he himself described as "A Mexican Serenade for piano"—certainly not an apt description for an item in true rag style! But the fact of the matter is that Solace is really not much more authentically Mexican than it is genuine ragtime. This is a four-minute gem of a habañera, which, as one might divine from the word, has roots in Havana. There is also in Solace something of the tango form, which, though distantly related to an African folk dance tradition, is more recently of the same Latin extraction as the habañera. Solace is, then, a true musical mish-mash—it is also a very lovely piece of Americana—familiar to millions by way of the 1973 movie The Sting.

As happens in Joplin's rags, several catchy little tunes, only a few of which were used by Marvin Hamlisch in The Sting, work together to make up Solace; the last of them, with its shiny, pulsing Caribbean dissonances, is especially comely. Fans of Georges Bizet's Carmen are invited to sit back, listen to Solace, and enjoy the same gently rocking habañera rhythm as is heard throughout the Frenchman's famous Habañera (actually it is not properly "his," since he actually adapted it from a folk tune). It is remarkable that a piece of music exists that allows us to draw a comparison between Georges Bizet and Scott Joplin.

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