It has been one month, one week and three days since the Hamilton Broadway Cast Recording dropped on NPR. This means that I’ve been listening to almost nothing but Hamilton for one month and three days. This album has changed my life.
In 2009, Lin-Manuel Miranda performed a rap song about US treasury secretary Alexander Hamilton at the White House. I happened to see the video of it around that time, and I fell in love immediately. I ripped the song from the youtube video and I’ve had that mp3 file in my things for six years. I memorized all the words. At the time, Mr. Miranda said he was making a mixtape. Some years later, I tried to find information about this fabled mixtape, but I came up empty. With pain in my heart, I gave up on that dream.
Well, a few months ago I found out that instead of a mixtape, he’d turned it into a hip hop musical, and that it was coming to Broadway.
It’s been three months since it opened on Broadway, and by all accounts this show has been wildly successful. Plenty of big names have gone to see it, including the president and his family. Tickets are hard to come by, and crowds of people stand around during pre-show lottery performances, hoping for a $10 ticket.
I’ve never been to a Broadway production before (or even to NYC at all, outside of an airport and a train station), but I can only hope that someday I’ll get to see this show. Until then, the cast recording is incredible, and the show is (mostly) sung through, so there’s no reason not to listen to it. I had to listen multiple times before I could make it through the whole 2 1/2 hours without crying. The music is so good, the writing is so good, the cast is so good. Everything is so good.
There’s a lot to love aside from the music, too. The history is great. Mr. Miranda fiddled with the timeline a little bit for the sake of the story’s flow, but many people have commented on its historical accuracy. There are all kinds of references to rap, musical theater, and history to look for, and hidden significance that can only be caught by multiple listens.
Another thing that makes this musical special is its multiracial cast. As Mr. Miranda likes to say, it’s the story of America then, told by America now. And honestly, a hip hop musical performed by a bunch of white people sounds kinda terrible. In Hamilton, the only cast member played by a white actor is King George III. There are already plenty of analyses out there about the analogies being made by this show’s casting choices, written by peope who are much more intelligent and articulate than I am. All I can say is, I could not be more thrilled with the actors that were chosen to be in this show, and I’m excited for 1776’s multiracial revival(!!!!!!).
There’s no real point to this post. I just wanted to express my love for this album, and how lucky I feel to be alive right now. #yayhamlet
(Here’s a resource post. Buy the cast recording.)
Daisy M. Hall 