On August 6, 2015, something the world had never seen before took Broadway by storm. When you think about Broadway plays, it’s hard not to think about the music that accompanies these productions. Almost always, shows are accompanied by a soundtrack full of some sort of flashy (and extraordinarily catchy) show tunes.
Myself being a huge junkie for said shows and music, I was surprised when my little brother sat down over Thanksgiving break and proceeded to show me this video:
The video depicts a man named Lin-Manuel Miranda performing what would become the first number of Hamilton, a show he wrote and now stars in about the life of "forgotten" founding father Alexander Hamilton. This initial performance occurred at the White House Poetry Jam. Yes, it is a hip-hop number. Yes, he does introduce his performance by saying that he believes Alexander Hamilton is essentially the genre of hip-hop/rap in human form. Everyone laughs at the beginning of his performance including President Barack Obama himself. But by the end, all laughter has ceased and is replaced by pure awe.
Not knowing anything about Lin-Manuel Miranda, I was incredibly impressed but also confused by this performance. My brother proceeded to tell me that this man was a musical genius, and that this piece was the first of what would become a show on Broadway… a show for which resold tickets are now priced at approximately $700+ a piece, and getting one of these tickets is incredibly difficult.
Needless to say, I was intrigued. What was all the hype about? I’ve been fortunate enough to see many a Broadway show in my day, and yes, they are amazing. But what could be this incredible? The answer, as it turns out, is pretty much everything.
My brother, being the mini-musical genius that he is, was fixated on the music of the show, which is revolutionary in itself because the entire show is told through hip-hop music. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never heard of a Broadway show featuring rap song after rap song.
Not only did this man recast Broadway music through this show, but makes an ingenious political statement as well. He made the deliberate decision to cast all of our nation’s founding fathers as people of color, primarily African Americans and Latinos. The only person who’s race stays true to history is that of the King, who is cast as nothing more than a comical character, a fool of sorts.
Alexander Hamilton came from nothing. He was born in the Caribbean, poor as poor can be. He was an illegitimate child who was orphaned very young. But he was a genius, a prodigy. When people caught wind of this, they funded his trip to the mainland to become educated and make something of himself. Essentially, Alexander Hamilton is the ultimate immigrant. He embodies every ideal our nation was founded on. He proved that with hard work, it is more than possible to come to America penniless, and end up with your face on the ten dollar bill. Through this music, Miranda boldly and effectively reminds us that this nation was built on immigrants, and unfortunately we’ve lost touch with this fact to an unsettling extent. We’ve reached a shameful place where lives of immigrants no longer have the hope and promise they used to. In the face of Donald Trump’s offensively ignorant rhetoric, and the negative stigma that has somehow come to be connoted with being an immigrant, it is important to remember that our nation was built on the idea of building ourselves from the bottom up. We were the underdog once. We gave it our all, and we won the Revolutionary War. Who are we to tell anyone that they can’t do the very thing that made us who we are? If we had the same immigrant policies and prejudices we do now back in 1776, we might not have an Alexander Hamilton in our history.
I haven’t been lucky enough to score tickets to a show yet, but according to those who have seen it, there is one line in particular that is extremely powerful. During the scene depicting the Battle of Yorktown, Lafayette (a Frenchman who was a key asset during the Revolution) and Hamilton say in unison, “Immigrants, we get the job done,” and high-five each other. It’s said that during almost every show, this evokes an enormous standing ovation mid-song. I take this as a sign that Miranda is doing more than just entertaining city-goers for a few hours with this show. He’s helping to change the world, to actually make America, the country of immigrants, great again.
