Link? Or paste? PM if you prefer.
I'm coercing 2017 to watch with us tomorrow. He'd prefer to watch old Office reruns over and over on his phone.
First, to tie back to baseball — in part I love this show because son and I listened to the soundtrack over and over and over again while driving between colleges and baseball tournaments during the summer of 2019. We listened, we talked, we googled stuff. It really was a bonding thing for us, which I think is one of the most valuable pieces of the the whole recruiting experience.
Here's the column, it's long, but so have been a lot of recent posts. But I'll apologize for that anyway.
Have a great Fourth all. There really is more pulling us together than dividing us.
There’s a difference between creative people and me.
A creative person walks into an airport bookstore, picks up a 731-page biography of an obscure founding father, and walks out with a monster hit musical.
Me? Not so much.
Which is why I am so in awe of “Hamilton,” a musical version of a biography of Alexander Hamilton created by Lin-Manuel Miranda. A film created from Broadway performances of the musical comes out on Disney-Plus Friday and I can’t wait to watch it.
I can’t think of anything better to do with a long Fourth of July weekend. Nothing more fun. Nothing more patriotic.
Now, I realize that Hamilton is history and that may not be everyone’s cup of tea. I also realize many people may never have heard of Alexander Hamilton, the “founding father who didn’t have a father.” And there are probably some of you who don’t care for musicals. Particularly musicals that rely heavily on hip-hop.
So I decided to offer this public service — what you need to know to make the most of “Hamilton," with the help of John Epperson, a longtime professor of American government at Simpson College, and a huge fan of the show.
The first thing you need to know, he says, is the story is true. So true that some lines are taken directly from the Pulitzer Prize winning biography of Hamilton by Ron Chernow that Miranda picked up in the airport.
The musical traces Hamilton’s life from his arrival as a “bastard orphan” from the West Indies on the docks of New York City to his death at the hands of Vice President Aaron Burr — “the damn fool who shot him.”
“The story of him coming to America is what it was,” said Epperson. “He was an orphan kid, people raised money for him to come to America, and he comes and remakes himself.”
The first portion of the show centers around Hamilton’s role in the Revolution, which he saw as “My Shot” — one of the many recurring themes in the musical.
“He wants to make a name for himself and that’s what he sees in the Revolution,” said Epperson. “He thinks the way to do it to go out and be a great soldier, but Washington needs him more as an aide.”
Hamilton served as General George Washington’s “Right-Hand Man” during much of the war, but finally had a pivotal role in the battle of Yorktown.
A line in the song “Yorktown” notes another fact, said Epperson. Hamilton — who wanted to ensure that no stray shot would alert the British to his regiment’s approach — made his soldiers unload their weapons before storming a position held by the British. The move was successful, and the Americans won the battle, the last major battle of the Revolution.
After the war, Hamilton wrote many of the Federalist papers that defended the new Constitution. When Washington was elected president, he named Hamilton secretary of the treasury.
The musical captures the ongoing battle between Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson, then secretary of state, over whether the United States should have a strong central government in two songs — Cabinet Battle 1 and 2 — said Epperson, who taught American government for close to 40 years.
“Miranda did a better job explaining that dispute than anything I did in class,” he said. Hamilton won the debate, and rescued the United States from insolvency by creating a national bank. In exchange for approval of the bank, he agreed to move the nation’s capitol from New York City to a newly created city — the District of Columbia — in a deal negotiated behind closed doors, a deal Miranda captures with a song called “In the Room Where It Happened.”
That song also rings true, said Epperson. “You have to be in the room,” he said. “If you’re not in the room, you’re not going to have any influence.”
The musical follows Hamilton through his time in government, the loss of his son in a dual, and an eventual war of words with Burr. Miranda used lines taken from letters that Burr and Hamilton exchanged in a song called “Your Obedient Servant.” The written battle eventually turned real and Hamilton was killed.
“The genius of Miranda is not only seeing there’s a musical in the book but seeing that these were young people who were going to make a name for themselves,” said Epperson. “Just like immigrants today.” Miranda strengthened that connection by having black and brown actors play roles such as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Hamilton himself.
Epperson says you don’t have to love hip hop or rap to love “Hamilton.” Some songs, including “It’s Quiet Uptown, “Burn” and others aren’t hip hop, but traditional ballads, he says. And while even the hip-hop songs are easy to understand, the format allowed writers to squeeze in a lot of words. That means a lot of listening for viewers.
“You have to pay attention,” Epperson said. “You can’t go to the refrigerator and get a pop, that won’t work.”
But the effort will be worth it. Epperson says, and I agree, “it’s the best play ever written.”
Celebrate that this weekend as we all honor the “young nation” that Hamilton helped create.
