A Broadway Rap Musical About the First U.S. Secretary of Treasury?
I must admit that when my mother first said, “Mimi, there’s an amazing musical that just came out! It’s about the American Revolutionary War and it has rapping!”, I was a bit skeptic. Though I love all things history and certainly enjoy listening to a variety of music, I wasn’t sure how this was going to work. I mean, Les Miserables did it...but Les Miserables doesn’t have any rapping. Rapping and Broadway show tunes had never occupied the same musical space in my mind, which, reflecting for a minute, is really unfortunate. Rap literally originated from the West African griot storytelling tradition, and yet there hadn’t been any rap musicals until this point.
Mind you, this was all before I was exposed to the Hamilton Original Broadway Soundtrack. After the soundtrack was a completely different story. Suddenly, I understood why my mommy had been so excited to tell me about Hamilton. Now, it is rare that people know me for very long before I make a Hamilton reference.
So today, I’ll be talking about my opinions on Hamilton’s strong points, and the areas in which the show sadly comes up short.
Strong Point #1- Diversity
One of Hamilton’s strong points is its diversity. I’m not just talking about the actors on stage. Although, that is a good place to start. Each of the casts of Hamilton, Broadway and off-Broadway, have been selected through color-conscious casting, meaning that the actors were cast solely for their talent and suitability for the role, resulting in a highly diverse cast. Why is this a big deal? Well, let’s face the facts- the narratives of people of color during the American Revolution are largely omitted in textbooks. Though we can give founding fathers such as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson credit for fighting for and contributing to the founding of the country we enjoy today, we often tend to ignore that these founding fathers also owned slaves, further erasing people of color from the early years of our nation’s history. I’ll return to the topic of Hamilton’s diversity in a bit.
Not-So-Strong Point #1- Its Portrayal of the Ladies
Though Hamilton does well with color-conscious casting, it falls a bit short in its portrayal of female characters. Those of you who have listened to the Hamilton soundtrack, and the fortunate few who have seen the musical might be saying “now Mimi, what about the Schuyler Sisters? Hamilton’s future fiance and her two sisters are included in much of the show and have their own catchy intro! Angelica Schuyler even sings about how when she meets Thomas Jefferson, she’s going to "compel him to put women in the sequel" to the Declaration of Independence, "work!” But the thing is, that’s how women in Hamilton are portrayed. They’re importance to the story is tied to their relation with Hamilton, a man. You might be saying “well, gosh, Jasmine. The show is called Hamilton. It’s about Alexander Hamilton. And that’s very true. But other men in the story get to sing and talk to each other about a variety of topics. The women in Hamilton mainly sing about falling in love with men, teaching men a lesson, and begging the men not to go off to war and get killed. The show even fails the Bechdel test. For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, the Bechdel test is a way of evaluating whether or not women in a work of fiction are portrayed in a sexist or stereotypical manner. In order to pass the Bechdel test, the work must have two women who talk (or in this case sing) to each other about something other than men, something which Hamilton doesn’t do.
Strong Point #2- Educational Value
Another one of its strong points is the educational value. Though the show isn’t completely historically accurate, with a few of Hamilton’s personal life details switched around for better story flow, it’s all about Alexander Hamilton, our nation’s first Secretary of Treasury, the American Revolutionary War, and the United States after the war ended. In fact, its creator, Lin Manuel Miranda, wrote the whole musical after reading Robert Chernow’s biography of Alexander Hamilton’s life. Several songs begin with either the show’s company or Aaron Burr, one of the show’s main characters, chanting out the title of an important historical event and the year in which it took place, for example “The Battle of Yorktown, 1781”. Hamilton doesn’t shy away from depicting the founding fathers’ political lives realistically. Similar to today, the people running our country didn’t always agree on how the nation should be governed or whether the United States should involve itself in international affairs. Due to Hamilton, many of the dates and details of our nation’s founding have been ingrained in my mind (hopefully permanently).
Not-So-Strong Point #2- Downplaying Slavery
Let’s jump back to the topic of diversity. I’ve already talked about how Hamilton gives people a chance to see people of color in our nation’s history, but how it doesn’t really do much in the way of women (though Angelica Schuyler raps, which is pretty cool). Hamilton the musical, for the most part, doesn’t touch on the system of American slavery very much. Slavery is a very important piece of our nation’s history, and while Hamilton can’t possibly include every historical event of the founding of our nation, slavery’s role is more than a little downplayed in the musical. The musical’s “villains” , a.k.a. any politicians who clashed with Hamilton *cough* Thomas Jefferson *cough*, are clearly depicted as slave-holders and proud of it, while the characters we are meant to relate to and become sympathetic with, like George Washington and Angelica Schuyler, aren’t, though both also owned many slaves. Hamilton had a chance to delve deeper into the issue of slavery in a song called Cabinet Battle #3, in which Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson rap battle about the moral costs and economic benefits of slavery and George Washington (who is portrayed like a father figure to Hamilton) demands to have the issue indefinitely taken off of the table. This song was unfortunately cut from the musical before it debuted.
Strong Point #3- Hip-Hop and Rap
My final strong point is still on the topic of diversity, and this is the part that I’m most excited to talk about. The musical diversity. Hamilton: An American Musical, is a hip-hop and rap Broadway musical. That’s something that’s never been done before. Sometimes, we like to think that rap and hip-hop are that “new-fangled stuff that young-uns listen to”. But it’s not. Hip hop has been around for over three decades, and rap for nearly as long. Hamilton reflects that. My dad and I were in the kitchen on Saturday morning the day I first played the Hamilton soundtrack for him. During one of the songs, he burst into laughter. I was confused. The song we were listening to was about Alexander Hamilton trying (unsuccessfully) to sway an entire government cabinet through intense rapping, so I didn’t see what was so funny. I paused the song, and my dad explained to me that some of the lyrics from the song were sampled from Grandmaster Flash, a rapper popular during his childhood. What I feel is important about this is that Hamilton is exposing people who would otherwise probably not listen to rap and hip-hop to it for, for some, the first time. Before Hamilton, I know I didn’t listen to any rap music. I’m not trying to say that everyone should listen to and enjoy rap. But I do believe that learning about the many musical cultures in our country can contribute to having a better understanding of the diverse perspectives of our nation’s citizens, both contemporary, and from the past.
Now, these are my opinions, but I urge you to form some of your own after listening to Hamilton yourself. Note, while the musical is awesome, it does contain some explicit language and mature content that may not be suitable for younger listeners. Clean versions of the songs are available.
Overall Thoughts
All in all, I feel that Hamilton: An American Musical does a lot of amazing things; from its color-conscious casting to its bringing hip-hop and rap to the Broadway stage, in some ways, its truly reflecting what America looks like now.
It does leave more to be desired in its portrayal of women and American enslaved people, but it also gives us an opportunity to do some creating of our own. Want a historically based musical featuring women or all about the contributions of people of color during the revolutionary war? You could be the one to make it happen.