Hamilton: Hip Hop and History- A Magical Combination
When you come back from a show that makes everyone who saw it laugh, cry and want to run to read the history books upon it was based, how can you not love it?
This show takes a figure in American history often seen as secondary to Washington, Jefferson and Madison and pushes him to the forefront as a revolutionary leader, political thinker and nation builder, all while highlighting his character as an immigrant and an orphan in a way that allows the immigrants and orphans of our day to identify more powerfully with the country and its possibilities.
Doing this is nothing less than re-imagining the social contract through art. Think of it as an arts based " People's History of the United States", an affirmation of the United States as a country for ALL its people, dramatized by a cast of brilliant actors and singers in which people of color predominate
And by choosing hip hop as the major art form to do this with-while highlighting key conflicts and crises of the revolutionary era with startling accuracy, it validates every one of us who has used hiphop in our classrooms as a tool to help young people understand the world around them.
For what is hip hop after all- it is poetry and spoken word over a beat, an art form which,at its best, puts the voice of the disfranchised at the forefront and is the ultimate vehicle of the "striver" demanding recognition.
And Hamilton was the ultimate striver. Someone who came from "nothing" to become someone. And what someone he was. Utterly relentless in his ambition, brutally direct and incredibly With A Brooklyn Accent: Hamilton: Hip Hop and History- A Magical Combination:
