My greatest regret of 2016 was a self-inflicted error of judgment. Everyone told me to listen to the soundtrack of the hit Broadway show Hamilton (even President Obama, who loves it so much he invited the cast over), and I resisted. I wouldn’t listen to the soundtrack until I had seen the show. I was wrong. Bless Lin-Manuel Miranda, its composer, playwright and star. The man is a genius – and that’s not just my opinion. It’s a fact, says the MacArthur Foundation, which awarded him its $625,000 genius grant last year.
I first saw Miranda, 36, on YouTube performing Fiddler On The Roof’s To Life with his extended family at his wedding. Miranda is a New Yorker, born to Puerto Rican parents, and a hip-hop head – not the usual ingredients that make up Broadway composers. At college, he began writing the multi-Tony winning (and Pulitzer-nominated) musical In The Heights, the story of a Dominican immigrant in New York.
He has mined the immigrant experience again in Hamilton, an unlikely blend of the life of US founding father Alexander Hamilton with R&B and hip-hop. Miranda’s references are legion. The music and lyrics are stupendous: rich with the detail of his own life, funny, moving and sharp, with call backs to all his influences. I have found myself crying on the subway, laughing out loud, and even executing a shuffle when listening to Guns And Ships as the C train pulls into Lafayette Ave station.
Miranda’s run as Hamilton ended this month, (he’s also in the new Mary Poppins film, and composed music for Disney’s Moana and the new Star Wars), but the show opens in London in 2017. Don’t be like me: book tickets and listen to the soundtrack on a loop ASAP.
