Earlier this month one of the most anticipated performances in the history of the Tony Awards took place. In honor of its 10th anniversary opening on Broadway, the original cast of Hamilton reunited for a live performance of some of the show’s songs.
Apparently, because I’m a historian who talks about art and culture, back when the musical first came out, I got asked a lot about what I thought of it. Though the tumult surrounding it has died down quite a bit, I’m still occasionally asked that question.
Ten years ago Hamilton was one of the biggest sensations in the American art scene. It ran off-Broadway from January to May, 2015 but then opened on Broadway in August of that year at the Richard Rogers Theater. And it’s still there.
It’s the creation of Lin-Manuel Miranda, a prolific 45-year-old composer, lyricist, and actor who won a Tony Award in 2008 for best original score for his musical In the Heights. If you listen to In the Heights, you’ll hear a lot of the musical roots of Hamilton.
As is the case with any musical theater, whether Lin Manuel Miranda or Cole Porter, first and foremost in Hamilton is the music. If you’ve heard anything at all about it, you’ve probably heard that it’s based on hip-hop and rap. So much has been made about this that you might think it contains nothing else. Back then, I knew some people who thought that and wouldn’t hear otherwise. There is rap, yes, but there are several other genres too, including some typical big chorus Broadway-style numbers.
But rap—or hip-hop as Miranda himself more often describes it—is a common thread that runs through the music. To read a line like “You’re gonna need congressional approval and you don’t have the votes,” which Jefferson and Madison at one point sing to Hamilton, sounds almost laughably ponderous, but the style of Miranda’s music makes it work effortlessly.
Renowned lyricist Stephen Sondheim said that when he first heard Miranda’s songs for Hamilton, they reminded him immediately of the song “Rock Island,” the memorable first tune from 1957’s classic The Music Man. That was “the first time anybody had attempted make music out of speech in the American theater,” Sondheim noted. “It doesn’t have the attitude of rap and nobody thinks of it as rap, but the technique is rap.”
What makes it work is that it’s good. Hip-hop proves to be no less a fit with musical theater than were the radically different styles of music in, say, West Side Story. Hamilton has a lot in common with that musical in that it capitalizes on popular styles not previously encountered on Broadway. And West Side Story didn’t work just because there was the novelty of a salsa or a mambo in it. West Side Story worked because Bernstein’s music is good. Same here. Ten years on, Hamilton still rewards repeated listening.
