Hamilton: The Revolution

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Then on November 2009, a newly minted President Obama and First Lady Michele Obama welcomed Miranda and his collaborator Alex Lacamoire to the White House's "Evening of Poetry, Music, and the Spoken Word". At the last minute Miranda decided to sing the first song from the Hamilton Mixtape, his performance that night is already on the history books. You can watch the video here. Diplomacy and entertaining have always gone hand in hand in the nation’s capital. Anderson House, the headquarters of the Society of the Cincinnati, has played a historic role in that story during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries—but… Hamilton: The Revolution, which tells the story of the musical from its inception through its current Broadway run, has just the kind of fun, conversational tone I was hoping for. It makes you feel like an insider, which is exactly what fans like me who aren't going to get within a thousand miles of New York City are clamoring for. You want to feel like Hamilton is your musical, too, even though you're limited to blasting the cast album and binging on #Ham4Ham videos on YouTube.

The book is at once an expanded playbill, an annotated libretto and a journalistic account that documents how each of the collaborators (actors, choreographer, director, producer, etc.) contributed to the musical and how it has impacted their personal and professional lives. Edit:*This play is so relevant to our world right now. This country has been a place where "A place where even orphan immigrants can leave their fingerprints and rise up" since the day we've been founded. Why should that ever change? The fact that people are calling for a boycott of this play is complete idiocy. The only people who are calling for one are those who support the hate and the racism in the first place. How about we try our best to not let them EVER win?* If you love Hamilton you should definitely read this, but even if you don't love Hamilton you will have a new appreciation for it after reading this book. Then there's a note about Lin's homage to Ja Rule in the song "Helpless" that describes Ja's voice as "a bear roaring at the bottom of a well, approximately." Which is the best description of Ja Rule I think ever. Oskar Eustis, artistic director of the Public Theater, where the show held its workshop run, lost his 16-year-old son in late 2014. Lost for what he should say, Lin sent Eustis and his wife a demo of the song "It's Quiet Uptown" in the hopes that it might offer comfort, and they listened to it every day. More sobs.I mean, really. How could you expect this to be anything but wonderful? Everything this man does is smart, thoughtful, and complex. Watch any interview out there with him (may I recommend the Charlie Rose piece that got chopped up for 60 Minutes), and you immediately realize that he is one of the most passionately enthusiastic people ever. His mind never stops going. He pours everything he has into everything he does. This book is no different. If you're a fan, this is a must. I inhaled this thing in a single sitting. No kidding.Ron told Pippa that during the six years he had spent on the book, Valerie Chernow had developed a powerful identification with Hamilton’s wife. “She used to say, ‘Eliza is like me: She’s good, she’s true, she’s loyal, she’s not ambitious.’ There was a purity and a goodness about the character, and that was like Valerie,” he says. In 2006, after 27 years of marriage, Valerie passed away. For her gravestone, Ron chose a line from the letter that Hamilton wrote to Eliza on the night before the duel: “Best of wives and best of women.” I have always loved history. Always. And while Rap isn't my #1 genre, something about the mastery of lyrics that some rappers have will never cease to amaze me. When I first heard about this play--that it took one of our founding fathers (one that had had such a HUGE impact on our young nation but that no one spoke much about) and turned the events of his life into a rap musical I just KNEW that this was going to be something that I was going to love. I'd say it has been at least three months since I have really started getting into the play and I seriously sing applicable lyrics or talk about these historical figures throughout each and every day (ask my boyfriend and sister). Alexander Hamilton was just such an intricate man that I think the best way to show our nation what he was really all about was in the form of rap lyrics. It truly encapsulates his life. From his lowly beginnings to his gradual and then meteoric rise to the top--we are able to FEEL every experience. I get goosebumps every. single. time. listening to "Yorktown (1776)" when Hamilton sings "Tens of thousands of people flood the streets." after the battle of Yorktown is fought and won. (I mean just picture the EXCITEMENT of this huge mass of newly free people. I can practically hear the roar of their voices as they flooded the streets). I tear up every. single. time. listening to "It's Quiet Uptown" and "Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story." I just think this play is SO ENTIRELY IMPORTANT because it shows the rise of our nation, but it also shows how we struggled in the beginning. Just as we are struggling now.

I suppose that's not fair of me. If I had it my way, at least every other line of the musical would have a footnote, if not a paragraph, accompanying it. But it is what it is.

I found this behind the scenes story utterly inspiring, if nothing else, it is the most delightful and entertaining history lesson ever! It is expected that in a few years, the musical will be licensed so high schools all over the country will be able produce the show. I believe that will be the lasting legacy of this play and Lin-Manuel Miranda. I’ve never been a huuuuge musical theater nerd, but I do follow it somewhat casually and that summer, I listened to practically nothing but the cast album for Lin’s Tony-winning first musical, In the Heights. It was unlike anything I’d ever heard before, but it was magical.

And in the passage about Hamilton biographer Ron Chernow, we learn that when Chernow's wife passed away in 2006, he chose for her headstone the line "Best of wives and best of women" from Hamilton's actual goodbye letter to Eliza. Sobs. This book does a fantastic job of exploring all of these themes, bringing in notes and interviews and discussions along with the history of the musical. Being able to read Lin's thought process was fascinating, and because I don't know a lot about rap/hip hop/r&b, reading about how much music influenced Lin's process was SO interesting. I love learning, and I love reading about subtle things artists do within their craft (e.g. the choreographer having Burr walk in straight lines while Hamilton walks in arches, because it represents how the two men thought and acted) of which audiences may not be cognizant, but are still able to register. Perhaps Miranda's greatest achievement might be helping a new generation to see the history of America as part of an overarching narrative and these historical figures as fallible human beings that did something extraordinary. Seriously, if I could give it every damned star in the cosmos, I would. This is honestly the most beautiful book I've ever seen in my life. The way they've tried to make it look like an eighteenth century book is A+. The texture and quality of the paper is wonderful. The photographs are astonishingly gorgeous and give you a real sense of how the show is staged and choreographed.Lin-Manuel Miranda's groundbreaking musical Hamilton is as revolutionary as its subject, the poor kid from the Caribbean who fought the British, defended the Constitution, and helped to found the United States. Fusing hip-hop, pop, R&B, and the best traditions of theater, this once-in-a-generation show broadens the sound of Broadway, reveals the storytelling power of rap, and claims the origins of the United States for a diverse new generation. Like Aaron Burr, I want more. I'm never going to see the musical in person, or if I do, it's going to be years from now with a new cast, probably on tour, and that's just not the same. So if you're going to give me this book, dammit, I want ALL YOU CAN GIVE ME. What was here was great. BUT I WANTED MORE. The essays were probably at just the right amount, and the pictures were beautiful, but I needed at least double the footnotes from LMM. If I can't be in the room where it happens, I need you to tell me exactly what happened in that room in excruciating detail, or I will never be satisfied (noooooot even sorry). This glorious, oversize testament to the uplifting, gorgeous, diverse, multiple Tony Award—winning musical Hamilton is a must-have for initiated and new listeners alike. —Sarah Hill, Lake Land College, Mattoon, IL School Library Journal And, honestly, I didn’t think much about it until September when I saw that NPR was streaming the album. I immediately grabbed my earbuds and hopped into the bathtub to listen to it, and that was really the first time I actually started to pay attention to the show’s content: researching the cast; trying to understand the historical context for the song’s lyrics; trying to find interviews with anyone who was involved in it. My appreciation grew, and I began to realize just how buzzy and sensational it was for everyone else, too. Lin-Manuel Miranda ( Book, Music, and Lyrics/Alexander Hamilton) is the Tony and Grammy award-winning composer-lyricist-star of Broadway's In the Heights— winner of four 2008 Tony Awards including Best Musical, Best Orchestrations, and Best Choreography with Miranda receiving the award for Best Score.

On opening night, standing under the Rogers's marquee, [Lin] realized that if Eliza's struggle was the element of Hamilton's story that had inspired him the most, then the show itself was a part of her legacy.” The show is about the builders, carpenters, the story behind the music and lyrics, the crew, actors, singers, dancers, the scenic designers, the choreographer, the director, the history, .....the musical performance. There's a note about how someone threw a shoe in fake disgust during the recording because Leslie Odom Jr. was so damn good while singing "Wait for It," then when the rest of the cast was supposed to go add in their harmonies, Okieriete Onaodowan responded, "I'm not singing shit right now."Granted, I'm the sort of person who loves talking and reading about the process of creating art, and why certain words were chosen, and rhyme schemes, etcetera, so I'm always going to want as much of that as possible. There were lyrics and moments that I'm dying from curiosity to know how he came up with them, and why he wrote them a certain way, that nothing was said about. UPDATE 1/22/17: Sooo because this world is crazy and sometimes dreams do come true, I saw Hamilton on Broadway last week. :O You can read about our trip here, if you're into that. (We stayed in a hotel that used to be a library!) And let’s talk about content. Are you a Hamiltonian? What’s your fave? While Quiet Uptown makes water leak out my face errrrrrry dang time I hear it, I can’t ever get enough of King George . . . . . FYI 小标题是书中chapter+歌名。Enjoy :) Chapter 1, with "Alexander Hamilton" 1. Hamilton第一次以公开演出是2009年5月12号在白宫的Evening of Poetry, Music, and the Spoken Word上。本来producer想让他唱Into the Height的作...