I have always been interested in musical theatre. Growing up in a small town in Connecticut, I was able to take the train to New York City whenever I wanted. My mom started taking me to see shows on Broadway at a young age. I grew up listening to the cast albums of shows such as Beauty and the Beast and dancing to endless Broadway show tunes in dance class. The first musical that really sparked my interest beyond seeing and listening to the cast album was Rent.
Now that's normally something a parent wouldn't want their nine-year-old listening to but I was hooked. I would listen and re-listen to get the deeper meanings behind the lyrics, I wanted to know what Jonathan Larson was thinking about when he wrote it and why he wrote the song with those specific lyrics. I was officially obsessed, even though my friends considered my love of Broadway very weird at the time.
Fast forward to a little over nine years later and another musical has recently sparked not only my interest, but the interest of the whole world. Yes, I am talking about Hamilton, the rap and hip-hop musical about founding father Alexander Hamilton. When you hear that description of the musical, you would think "Who would write a rap musical about a dead white guy?", because that's honestly what I thought too when I first heard about it back in early summer 2015.
Written by Tony, Grammy, and Emmy-winning composer and lyricist Lin-Manuel Miranda, this musical covers basically the entire life of Alexander Hamilton, from when he first came to America from a "forgotten spot in the Caribbean" to his eventual duel with his longtime rival/friend Aaron Burr.
The inspiration for Hamilton came to Miranda when he read Ron Chernow's biography Alexander Hamilton on a vacation. The musical took him six years to write and premiered on Broadway on August 6, 2015. What makes the show so interesting is that the entire cast is people of color because Miranda wanted the story to be "more accessible to a contemporary audience".
There has been criticism about this choice of casting recently because of a casting notice that was put up seeking "non-white" performers. Some have viewed this as discriminatory, even though some shows have asked for specifically white performers (you can read more about this and Hamilton's casting directors response here). Another reason the story is so interesting is that it covers many years of history in a two-and-a-half hour show, covering the United States declaring independence from Great Britain, to the election of 1800.
The main reason why the show is so popular is because it uses two genres of music that is not normally represented in musicals, rap and hip-hop. When Miranda first read the biography by Chernow, he thought to himself if a hip-hop musical had been written about Hamilton yet because he felt that his life embodied the genre. The lyrics were completely written by Miranda himself and the cast album was produced by Questlove and Black Thought of the band The Roots. It also reached the #1 spot on the Rap Album chart on Billboard, the first musical theatre album ever to do so.
The show has been immensely popular with viewers and celebrities. President Obama has even visited the show twice and the cast recently performed at The White House. People from Beyonce to Kanye West have been in the audience at the Richard Rodgers Theater and tickets for the show are sold out until the end of 2016, making it an extremely hot ticket for everyone.
The show also recently won a 2016 Grammy award for Best Musical Theater Album. Miranda has also authored a book that is complete with annotations for the lyrics and pictures from the show entitled Hamilton: The Revolution which will be released on April 12, 2016. The talk about taking Hamilton off the $10 bill is also changing because of the popularity of the musical, which shows the impact that theatre and music have on the world.
With all of the history packed into this show, I immediately bought Chernow's biography (which I have unfortunately not been able to read yet) and googled all about the history behind it. Thankfully, with Miranda's book releasing soon and the show's complete lyrics complete with annotations being available on Genius, it is not hard to find why Miranda wrote specific songs and lyrics. I also had the privilege of seeing the show back in November front row thanks to the show's Ham4Ham lottery that offers $10 seats for 21 lucky people.
While Hamilton is still creating its legacy and impacting more and more people, I am lucky that I will always have the memory of seeing such an amazing show and have the privilege of listening to the cast album every day. So thank you, Lin-Manuel Miranda. Thank you for changing how people view musical theatre and thank you for creating Hamilton. May your life be filled with many more great ideas and keep writing like you're running out of time.
