Everyone together now: “How does a bastard, orphan, son of a whore and a Scotsman ...”

Last August, the musical “Hamilton” opened to the public on Broadway and instantly became a smash sensation. Entirely sung through, the musical is infused with rap, hip hop and R&B musical numbers with lyrics so powerful (“Legacy? What is a legacy? It’s planting seeds in a garden you never get to see.”) that it is nearly impossible to get through the soundtrack without getting teary-eyed at least once. But what makes the show so powerful is that the life and struggle of Hamilton and the creation of the United States is still very relevant today -- you actually learn more about history in the musical than you do in K-12, you realize that history is very different depending on the person telling it, and you notice that the most powerful character in the show is not actually Alexander Hamilton, but his wife Eliza. But perhaps the single most important thing about the production is that the entire cast is composed of people of color. The Founding Fathers, the women of the show, and the ensemble are either Asian-American, Latin American, or African-American. The only white actor plays King George, but that is used to show the contrast. The king and his songs are very show tunes-y and very much what the Old Broadway was in the old United States. The diversity in the rest of the cast and the different styles of music incorporated into their performances show the new Broadway, the way the United States is now.

So writes Miranda, “Immigrants, we get the job done.” So the story goes: An immigrant arrives in America and leaves his mark in American politics. It’s not an uncommon story, because most, if not all, of us can relate to this in some way. America was built by immigrants, even if they were white. That fact is irrelevant because they were all living on stolen land. Immigrants try to leave a mark in history, but we are now living in a United States where we assume that all Muslims are targeting the U.S., that we need to build a wall to keep the immigrants out, ultimately forgetting the ideas and the foundation of the country.

The show subtly tackles issues affecting the U.S. today. Discrimination: “And though I’ll never be truly free, until those in bondage got the same rights as you and me.” “This is not moment, it’s the movement.” Feminism: “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal. And when I meet Thomas Jefferson, I'ma compel him to include women in the sequel.” And it also focuses a lot on how politics works. “The Room Where It Happens” focuses on how Alexander Hamilton got his financial plan through and how we don’t know how it happened, but “we just assume that it happens.” How do politicians compromise? What do they do to get their laws passed?

The show also tackles marriage, affairs, how far-fetched some things were in the 1700s (duels were acceptable and the runner-up in a presidential campaign became vice president regardless of political party), but a big theme featured throughout the musical is the idea of a legacy. Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr want to be remembered, but both take a different course of actions. Hamilton acts on it, Burr prefers to wait for it. Hamilton is so obsessed with his legacy that it basically becomes his downfall. Hamilton was a fantastic writer with fantastic ideas, and after the Adams Administration found out about his torrid affair with Maria Reynolds, he had to do anything to preserve his name. In the process, he ruined his own life and his wife’s. In “The World Was Wide Enough,” Hamilton sings, “I wrote some notes at the beginning of a song someone will sing for me.” He created words, he built palaces out of paragraphs, but how they become interpreted when they’re performed and what impact they will have is beyond his control. So he accepts his fate. After his death, his wife, Eliza, finishes his song. He tells his story, the story of Washington, the story of the soldiers who fought with Hamilton, to keep their memory alive. So that people can always remember the accomplishments they have made. We know about Hamilton and all the great things he did as secretary of state; we remember Washington and his triumphs in the war and as the first president; their legacy lives on. But most of the characters, we’ve probably never heard of before -- Burr, the Schuyler Sisters, Lafayette, Hercules Mulligan, Laurens -- but Miranda fully fleshes out these historic figures who often aren’t remembered or even mentioned in our history books. He brings justice to characters who are as important as Hamilton, who accomplished just as much, and Miranda is telling their story. Their legacy gets to live on.

The title song introduces us to a character without any family who wrote his way out of poverty and came to America. We learn that Hamilton wanted to fight and not write, and was constantly overlooked by Washington, Lafayette (America’s favorite fighting Frenchman) got more guns and ships from France, Hercules Mulligan was a spy. We learn about the infamous Yorktown battle. The songs are upbeat enough, are fun enough, with their fast-paced rhythms and raps, that you’re subconsciously learning all this information. Alexander Hamilton had an affair with Maria Reynolds. (Listen to "Say No To This." Best. Song. Ever.) We discover that there was a third Schuyler Sister, Peggy, who we see a couple of times. In the “Cabinet Battle #2” Thomas Jefferson wants to help out France because of the treaty they made, but Hamilton doesn’t think it’s a good idea because it would harm the new nation and because the King they made the treaty is super dead. We learn tidbits of characters, we learn about the revolution, the impacts, the aftermath, the backstory to key characters and those relatively unknown, in an entertaining way that has inspired teachers across the nation to have lectures over Hamilton by listening to the soundtrack or having their students have rap battles over important social topics.

Another big element of the musical is the biases of history and how it varies depending on who is the one telling it. For example, the upbeat song “Helpless” implies that Angelica introduces Alexander to Eliza and that’s just it. Eliza is so in love him, they get married, aww cute. But then the follow-up song, “Satisfied,” shows things from Angelica’s narrative. Angelica meets Alexander and is smitten with him but gives him up because she has put her sister first and she always regretted it. In “The World Was Wide Enough” Burr thinks that Hamilton is going to shoot him because he is wearing his glasses but Alexander’s intention was always to aim at the sky and not shoot Burr. “Burn” shows how Eliza reacted to finding out that her husband cheated on her, and had the affair in their own house. In actuality, we don’t know how Eliza reacted because there isn’t anything on Eliza and her reaction to the affair. We will never really know her side of the story. In our history classes, we learn about the wins and not the losses. We learn one side of it, not the full story. What Miranda does is incredible -- he writes the narrative from Hamilton’s version of events, from Burr’s, from Eliza’s, from Angelica’s -- because it gives us a better understanding of the characters and why the act the way they do. Miranda creates the characters as more than just a caring wife, or an arrogant writer, or as the man hated for shooting Hamilton. He gives them life, he gives them a story, he makes them real people. Hamilton was an orphan, a man desperate to have a good legacy, a grieving father. Burr was a man in love, a man wanting to make his parents proud, a man proud of his daughter. They are given real emotions, real motivations, and in the end, even when Burr shoots Hamilton, you feel bad for him. You don’t just brush Angelica off, you empathize with her.

And now for the hero of the story: Eliza Schuyler. When Eliza first meets Alexander, she falls helplessly in love with him, but as her sister Angelica tells us, “he will never be satisfied.” Alexander is constantly leaving Eliza behind for war, George Washington, and endless other political pursuits. When she finds out that Alexander cheated on him, she burns all the letters he wrote to her so people will never know how she reacted when he broke her heart. After her son’s death, she does the unimaginable and forgives him. Before he dies, Alexander’s last words to his beloved wife were “best of wives and best of women.” What’s amazing about Eliza is that her character is treated with such reverence despite that we, the audience, don’t actually know anything about her or any of the other women from that time period. We know of Martha Washington and Betsy Ross. But Miranda shows us that the women in our history are also just as worthy of our admiration and honor. After Hamilton’s death, Eliza interviewed the soldiers who fought by his side, raised funds for the Washington monument, spoke out against slavery, established the first private orphanage in New York City. She was selfless, dedicating her life to the tell story of others despite everything she went through. Hamilton is about the men who built the nation, but it takes the time to acknowledge that women were neglected by history but empowers them in the process. It brings their stories and good deeds to the forefront. There are many ways in which women are heroes throughout history, from saving hundreds of orphaned children or like Angelica who was simply there for a sister when her husband cheated on her. Eliza Hamilton makes it clear that without women, some of the most important people would be resting in obscurity. And because of that, she is the true hero of the story.

"Hamilton the Musical" is sold out for pretty much the rest of the year unless you want to spend over $600 on StubHub. But even if you don’t get the chance to see the production live, take the opportunity to listen to the beautifully crafted soundtrack. Listen to the poignant lyrics, learn more about the history, through the eyes of characters who don’t get their due recognition. Lin-Manuel Miranda is telling the story of an important man in an important time in our history, and so his legacy and the rest of the influential people lives on. Hamilton tells us that you have to do your best to tell your story, and then you have to find a way to let go and let time take care of the rest.