Image: https://www.linmanuel.com/
Once a local New York City sensation for his off-Broadway, Tony Award-winning, hit In The Heights (a musical about growing up in NY’s Washington Heights neighborhood), Lin Manuel Miranda solidified his place in musical theater history by rapping about United States history. Namely rapping about, and as, a founding father.
“Alexander Hamilton.
My name is Alexander Hamilton.”
With its first performance on January 20, 2015, the “Hamilton” musical was one of the first sung-and-rapped Broadway musicals to find such an immense success — eventually earning Lin-Miranda a Tony, a Grammy, and a Pulitzer prize for the work.
A piece of great historical value
Manuel Miranda used Founding Father, and Treasury Secretary, Alexander’s Hamilton’s “immigrant status” during the 1700s as a parallel to the stories of marginalized communities. When Miranda first told introduced a “few bars” of his “terrible pitch” for a musical to an audience of VIPs — including the U.S. President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama—, he explained Hamilton had “the life of someone who embodies hip hop.”
History was made.
On the surface, Miranda’s “Hamilton” is a story of the revolution that led to the basis of America as we know it today.
Dig deeper, and the Broadway hit tells the tale of four friends desperate to remove the oppressive state that they believed was keeping them from finding happiness in a new land. The friends — Hamilton, Laurens, Lafayette, and Mulligan — all seemed to be longing for a revolution.
By combining hip-hop and jazz influences — both music born of oppression — with stories of immigrant communities longing to be free from an oppressive overlord, Miranda was able to mimic what many were feeling in the modern times that the musical was released. This may be precisely why the musical became so instantly successful, nominated for a record 16 Tony Awards. Another first? The Broadway cast composed primarily of black and brown actors and actresses.
Younger audiences will be treated to a kid-friendly version of “Hamilton” as it makes its debut on Disney+. ” … I literally gave two f—s so the kids could see it,” he joked, as he revealed the differences between the stage and streaming version via social media.
The 40-year-old Padre of Broadways’s latest project? Writing the music for the upcoming live-action version of the 1989 Disney classic Little Mermaid.
Musical history will probably be made again, at Disney and beyond.
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