I watched the Carpool Karaoke episode on The Late Late Show the night before last. James Cordon had Lin-Manuel Miranda, Audra McDonald, Jesse Tyler Ferguson and Jane Krakowski in the car singing songs from Hamilton, Rent and Les Misérables. It was incredible.
I am not a big fan of rap music. In the case of Hamilton though it is absolutely brilliant. Perhaps the things that put me off of rap was the gangsta topics many rap songs focus on. I have no experience of the things they are talking about and I don’t like the glorification of violence that it seems to advocate. Hamilton on the other hand is a literate exploration of the life and times of one of the founding fathers of our country from a perspective rarely seen in main stream history books.
I have long been a fan of Broadway musicals but I felt they were in decline in recent years. Rent and Les Misérables were of course notable exceptions. But I think Hamilton is the tipping point. It has brought relevance back to the musical. Coming from a theatrical family, my parents were both Speech and English teachers that produced high school plays, it warms my heart to see the revival of the live theater experience as an integral part of our American culture.