The New York Times: In the hit Broadway musical “Hamilton,” Lin-Manuel Miranda tells the story of Alexander Hamilton, once the most overlooked founding father, by seamlessly weaving hip-hop into a musical theater framework. It’s a novel hybridization, but is Mr. Miranda successfully paying tribute to both traditions or somehow weakening one of them? How specific are his references? How skillful is the rapping? Anthony Tommasini, the chief classical music critic of The New York Times and an avowed musical theater enthusiast, spoke with Jon Caramanica, a pop music critic for The Times, about technical fluency, Stephen Sondheim and Biggie Smalls. These are excerpts from their conversation.
4 comments:
I think that it is so interesting how Lin-Manuel Miranda’s music intertwines Rap and Broadway. Though I have never seen Hamilton,( I really want to though!) I am fascinated how he accomplishes this. As referenced in the article, Miranda relies on the preexisting rap world as inspiration for some of his lyrics. I thought that is was cool how one of the authors of the article could actually see similarities with other rappers. Miranda definitely did his research, on both the rapping end and historical end. I also find it pretty amazing just how well Alexander Hamilton’s story fits the stage and fits the rap genre. Hamilton is a true rags to riches story, with excitement, politics, and rebellion. It is a classic broadway story, wrapped up in hip-hop and the American Revolution. I hope that I will be able to see this fantastic musical soon, but from the review, it might take me a while to get a ticket.
When I saw Hamilton on Broadway, I, like everyone else, was absolutely blown away. Every word in that show is brilliantly crafted and fits each character perfectly. Miranda captures the personality of each character with a musical style, and then reuses that style for them at multiple points during the show. The article mentions how the show is really Burr's show, and I agree with that very strongly. Though the show is obviously about Hamilton and his incredible story, and it provides a lot of depth to the character and historical figure of Aaron Burr that is not really given in other historical depictions the founding fathers. Overall, Miranda does an incredible job at writing each character, and the cast does an incredible job of bringing those characters to life.
As a lover of both rap and musical theater, Lin Manuel is a master of both. I have listened to some shoddy recordings of the entire musical and despite the low quality you can still hear the lyrical finesse. He certainly reminds me of old school hip hop artists, especially those with clever plays on words and interesting use of diction and language, like A Tribe Called Quest. Even his simple 20 minute musical written for This American Life, "21 Chump Street" is as equally catchy as it is lyrically smart. I can't wait to hear a real recording of the show, or see it, even though tickets are sold out for many months to come.
And on another note, the fact that Lin casts a color conscious cast, despite it being a historical show is insightful and groundbreaking. It truly does highlight the similarities between the times of now and then in terms of social unrest.
I have not seen Hamilton yet, but I am in January. I have read a lot about Hamilton so I feel like I generally know the type of show, but not the exact story. I am a big fan of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s work especially In The Heights. I really like his style of rap and musical theatre mixed together because it is very different than your traditional musical. Hearing the same type of music with a similar story gets boring after awhile and as time goes on it is harder to find new and different ideas. I really respect Lin-Manuel Miranda for thinking outside the box and combining his love of hip-hop and theatre together. I think it makes the show more exciting and fun to have that style of music added in especially because it is often unexpected on a traditional show. I also think it is important that by adding hip-hop and rap into theatre, it is expanding the type of people in the audience. People that normally do not watch theatre are seeing Hamilton because they like hip-hop. Attracting wide and different audiences is extremely important to continue the growth of theatre as a whole. Lin-Manuel Miranda is changing the way people view theatre.
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