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I was especially intrigued by two things: Lin-Manuel was using hip-hop, the beats and verses, the culture, the language, the attitude, to remix this story of an ostensibly White founding father into a musical. Second, the playwright boldly decided to cast a majority of Latino/a and Black actresses and actors in these roles documenting Hamilton’s life, regardless of the fact that people of African descent were predominantly slaves during this period in American history. That blew my mind, made me think back to when I played Thomas Jefferson as a boy in that grade school play, and nothing, like nothing, in my childhood camera phone could have pictured Black and Brown bodies taking on the bodies of White folks, those kinds of White folks, on Broadway, AKA “the great white way,” no less.
Indeed if the #OscarsSoWhite, then that theater district has historically been #BroadwayBeyondSoWhite. You can pretty much count on both your hands and both feet in the 100-plus year history of Broadway the stars and creators and hit shows where people of color dominated the stage, specifically Latinos and Blacks… Bert Williams… “Shuffle Along”… “Too Many Girls”… Olga San Juan… José Ferrer… “West Side Story”… Rita Moreno… Chita Rivera… Ben Vereen… Miguel Piñero… Melba Moore… “Dreamgirls”… August Wilson… George C. Wolfe… Savion Glover… “Bring In Da Noise Bring In Da Funk”… John Leguizamo… “Anna in the Tropics”… Audra McDonald… “In The Heights”… Quiara Alegría Hudes….
And then there is Lin-Manuel Miranda and “Hamilton”… No one could get a ticket it seemed, for the hottest Broadway show in like forever. I begged, I tweeted and posted to Facebook, I called people who called people, I knew people who knew people, and I was turned off, to be mad blunt, by the ticket prices, some north of $1000; I refused to pay part of my total monthly bills just to see a play, no matter how game-changing. People who did catch “Hamilton” raved about it, adding to my angst. It has been a mega-hit, one that forced producers to share in the profits with the majority people of color original cast, a rarity for Broadway. Controversy was stirred when a casting call went out seeking “non-White” actors to replace members of the initial ensemble, presumably. Interesting, yo, considering we’ve seldom heard the New York White theater elite complain about decade upon decade of exclusion and marginalization of Black, Latino/a, Asian, Arab, or Native American actresses and actors from its stages—
When my companion and I arrived at the Richard Rodgers Theatre, she and I were struck by the fact that folks had been sleeping outside for several days—food, drink, blankets, sleeping bags, cardboard—in anticipation of tickets, via lottery. I was doubly struck by the massive crowd outside, and the wild energy that was abuzz there in Times Square, and how most of the ticketholders were overwhelmingly White. This was disconcerting to me, and reminded my companion and I of the Upper Westside dinner we had left minutes before, where an elderly White wife and husband sitting at the next table chatted us up about “Hamilton.” The wife had seen it, and said, with adolescent innocence, “I did not think I would like a play with rapping. I did not think I would understand it. But I did. I got it.” I was intrigued and amused because, well, I am a life-long hip-hop head, literally grew up in the culture, as a dancer, a graffiti writer, a music journalist, a founding staff member of Quincy Jones’ Vibe magazine, and I co-produced the very first exhibit on the history of hip-hop in America, at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. For sure, my next book more than likely is a long-overdue biography of hip-hop’s greatest icon, Tupac Shakur. Gravely ironic, given how poorly a Broadway show inspired by his life and music did before “Hamilton” premiered.
Hip-hop, the foundation for “Hamilton,” was created by poor people: poor African Americans, poor Latinos/as, and poor West Indians, in New York City, much of it incubated “Uptown,” in The Bronx, in Harlem, before spreading across the five boroughs of our metropolis. These were the same poor people Martin Luther King, Jr. warned us not to abandon and forget at the end of his life. That Dr. King who condemned the Vietnam War and said we were sending poor Blacks and poor Whites to fight poor Yellow people in Southeast Asia. That Dr. King, he of the Nobel Peace Prize, global fame, and the moral leader of the Civil Rights Movement. And that Dr. King—eff the awards and accolades—whose final act, before his assassination on the balcony of that Memphis motel, was organizing Black garbage men there, and a national “Poor People’s Campaign.” Made in America, the birth of the hip-hop nation was more or less Dr. King’s vision set to the grits-eggs-and-bacon frying pan rhythms of funktified artists like James Brown. Simple definitions of hip-hop are “winning on our terms” and “making something from nothing.” Nothing is right. In its soul hip-hop are these favorite things: a microphone, two turntables, spray paint or magic markers, and sneakers and cardboard or linoleum to dance on. These things represent the four key elements of hip-hop: the rapper or emcee, the deejay, dancing, and graffiti art. Hip-hop factually began, in my humble opinion, when a young lad named Clive Campbell—hip-hop alias is Kool Herc—arrived from his native Jamaica in the West Indies to New York City, in 1967, right in the middle of Dr. King’s last year of life. A West Indian immigrant just like Alexander Hamilton, Herc too came with a dream, determined to hustle and flow.
I thought about all of this as we made our way into the Richard Rodgers Theatre, especially as I strained my eyes to find, here there anywhere, Black and Latino theatergoers. There were barely any. The few Black and Brown faces I saw were those who worked at the theater, taking our tickets, working security, running concessions, ushering us this and that way. Meanwhile, there were countless White families, undoubtedly rich enough to afford the steep ticket prices, with their children, teenagers, pre-teens in tow. I thought about the fact that when I played Thomas Jefferson in the fourth grade, Broadway, although a stone throw away from my Jersey City birthplace, seemed millions of miles across the universe. The closest I could ever get as a child was that “1776” production I was in, and the commercials of various plays on television. What would my life had been like, if I had been blessed to experience Broadway, to be exposed to live theater, as a child, as the White children were doing with “Hamilton” and God only knows how many other plays. I similarly thought of the early to mid-1980s, when as a youth I attended the greatest hip-hop parties in New York City: at places with names like Union Square, the Rooftop, the Roxy, and Roseland. Those same African American, Latino/a, and West Indian youth who created hip-hop begat a second generation, a second wave of hip-hop heads that included kids like me. It was rare, in those days, to see a White person embracing our culture, and if she or he did, if she or he were there, it meant they were also gaining the knowledge, as we said, of not just the music and fashion and language, but also of our lives. Because, frankly, there was no way to access hip-hop without also being forced to confront race, gender, class, poverty, violence, and the many forgotten people and communities of America. As Chuck D, lead rapper of Public Enemy, prophetically said, hip-hop was our CNN.
Once “Hamilton” began I was mesmerized. Yes, I had seen majority people of color shows on Broadway before (like “Fela!” and “A Raisin in the Sun,” and nearly everything August Wilson had ever done). Yes, I had previously witnessed highly successful Broadway productions with the energy of hip-hop at its core: “Bring in Da Noise Bring in Da Funk” and “Def Poetry Jam.” But nothing, like nothing, prepared me for “Hamilton.” It is a thrilling excursion into the life of an overlooked American hero whose racial identity and immigrant status were questioned more than a few times by his contemporaries. It is one of the best American musicals I’ve ever seen, in any format. There is music, there is singing, there is rapping, there is dancing, and there are virtuoso performances by the entire cast. I was particularly affected by the majestic talents of Daveed Diggs, who played two characters, Marquis de Lafayette and Thomas Jefferson; and by Leslie Odom, Jr., with his stirring and somber interpretation of Aaron Burr. Hamilton’s rocky childhood and longing for a whole family made me think of my also being called “illegitimate” because my father and mother were not married either. Likewise I marveled at how Hamilton made the most of every opportunity, getting his college education paid for, as I did, not finishing undergrad, as I did not either. His passion for writing was mine, too. His dedication to a cause, in this case the American Revolution, the same thirst for answers as we ask, in our times, if Black lives matter. Slavery, immigration, his sex scandal while married, it is all there in “Hamilton,” brought into existence by this worldwide cultural movement we call hip-hop.
But the very same people who created hip-hop cannot, by and large, afford to see a show inspired by what they created. This is the warped rationale of American capitalism. Something becomes hot, “they” raise the prices, be it gentrification in our ‘hoods or a Broadway show, they price people out, they make the demand so high as it is ridiculous, and they make it something only the exclusive few can experience. And folks downright lucky, like me, who got my two tickets I paid for at a reasonable price, because a very kind man on Facebook connected me to a friend he had who was working for “Hamilton.” Yeah, I got the friend-of-a-friend discount hook-up, miraculously, through genuine human kindness. I was grateful, but I did also wonder, while absorbing “Hamilton,” if this play would have mattered had it been about that Black colonial figure Benjamin Banneker, not Alexander Hamilton. I wondered if the play would have mattered, or even gotten produced, or be the juggernaut it has become, had it been about slavery, about the African people who many of those founding fathers owned, or if it had been about, say, Nat Turner, and the slave rebellion he led, instead of about these powerful and power-addicted White men, with Hamilton squarely at the center of it all? Some would argue that those are complex questions. And my reply is, no, it is rather simple. Native Americans were here first. The land, theirs, was stolen from them. They were the victims of genocide. African people were stolen from Africa. They were made to work for free as slaves. The genocide was brutal and ugly and the institution of slavery was brutal and ugly. And in the midst of this White men, White men like Hamilton, fought for their freedom, although their freedom had nothing to do with my freedom. So what makes this play different, unique, and subversive, is that Lin-Manuel cuts and scratches, a la a hip-hop deejay, the narrative, and he, a Puerto Rican, is the title character. It is a not-so-subtle way to critique Alexander Hamilton and his founding father homeboys, but also a not-so-subtle critique of the mighty lack of democracy on Broadway, and in America itself.
[…]
Hamilton’s life ended by gunshot, just like that. White-on-White founding father violence, but we don’t call it that, now do we? Hamilton was dead, dead like Philando Castile, the very next day after Sterling, the same week, yes, as America’s Fourth of July holiday made possible by men like Alexander Hamilton, sitting there in a White tee shirt in the passenger seat of a car in Minnesota, as his girlfriend Diamond Facebook lives this gruesome and frightening scene of him and her little girl in the backseat, with the just-fired gun of a police officer lipping the edge of the video. Was this real, were these folks acting there in Minnesota, as Miranda and his cast mates were acting on that Broadway stage? Alexander Hamilton had many beefs in his lifetime, with Jefferson, with Adams, with Burr. He spoke about slavery. He did his best to prove himself, worked hard, as hard as Alton Sterling worked selling those cds and dvds to feed his family. As hard as Philando Castile worked at that Minnesota Montessori school, in the lunchroom, not only making sure those kids ate, but being a role model of what is possible, as Hamilton was. What is the value of a life, any life, if it can be taken away so easily? What is an act of violence if not a form of mental and spiritual insanity where we feel that hitting, kicking, punching, beating, or shooting and murdering each other is a natural and permanent replacement for peace, for love?
Truth be told, Hamilton and the founding father’s times were as violent as our times now. The play reinforces, start to finish, if one were truly listening and paying attention, that this nation, our nation, was built, brick by brick, on violence, that this violence is a way of life for us. And this nation, our nation, was founded on power, on greed, on hoarding resources for a small minority, at the expense of the rest of us. That sort of thing will drive you crazy, once you begin to become aware of who the founding fathers truly were, it will make you crazy if there were local militias, then, and local police, now, who, excessively militarized, treat regular everyday citizens as threats to the one percent who run and dictate everything. It will make you crazy if you served in the American military, in Hamilton’s time, in these times, only to see yourself left out of the American dream. The trauma can be overwhelming, the sadness and anger a deadly rat poison one drinks and vomits into a psychotic rage; and because those same founding fathers ordained your right to bear arms, you just might become Micah Johnson killing police officers in Dallas and Gavin Long killing police officers in Baton Rouge, and seek revenge on local police, especially if you watched, as I did, over and over, those ghastly scenes of Sterling and Castile dying—or Eric Garner, or Tamir Rice, or the uncountable other viral videos of Blacks dying at the hands of White, Black, Latino/a, or Asian police, like it is a spectator sport, a reality television show, a rite-of-passage to being Black in our America. Not an excuse, not support for anyone who would point and shoot at police, not a call for violence toward anyone—as I do not condone violence in any way—just some context for y’all to consider. And to consider, too, that the police shooters in both Dallas and Baton Rouge were military veterans. War is hell, Marvin Gaye once sang. Well, I am sure, a double hell to return to the U.S. after fighting for freedom for others, as they like to say, but wondering why your people do not have it at home. Call it rage, call it revenge, call it the post-traumatic stress disorder of a post-military life, call it cocking and aiming a gun when you feel like it in America; be it the police killing innocent citizens, or citizens killing innocent police officers, we’ve come to a severe crossroads in America and you, me, we, have no clue from whence the bullets will come and who they will murder next.
Death is a part of life, my Aunt Cathy always says. Yes, auntie, fo’ sho’. But there is something utterly abnormal about dying, in an Orlando nightclub, outside a convenience store, inside your stopped car, in a duel, on that Memphis motel balcony, at a school, on a college campus, at work, in a church prayer circle, on the streets, in your home, just because we have been so conditioned to believe that we are in a perpetual state of war. Except we have no clue for what or whom we are fighting, except ourselves.
I thought of this when we left Connecticut and my companion—in the aftermath of Diamond’s video of her dead boyfriend and her alive little girl in that Minnesota car—said not only was she not comfortable driving and was terrified of the police pulling us over, but that she was more fearful for my driving because I am a Black man in America. I thought of this as we left Connecticut, a state that had slavery, contrary to notions that slavery was just down South, and we headed back into New York City, which at one time was the biggest importer of slaves in America. I thought of this as I saw, in my mind’s yes, Lin-Manuel Miranda, as Hamilton, shouting on the stage of the Tony Awards, the night after the Orlando shooting, “Love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love, cannot be killed or swept aside….”
Yes, love, I agree, one thousand percent. For it is the most revolutionary act we could ever perform on any stage, to love ourselves, to love each other. What the founding fathers loved was power, was privilege, was property, human and material, and that is why America, our America, remains, limbo-like, in a state of flux, over 200 years old now, yes, but also forever that infant unable to walk without falling down. America needs to be born, again, but it ain’t happening if we do not make it happen.
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Hamilton, O.J. Simpson, Orlando, Gun Violence, and What the 4th of July, Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, and the Dallas and Baton Rouge Police Shootings Mean to Me (Utne Reader)
read the whole damn thing