The play, Hamilton; The Revolution, has gotten ravenous reviews and a trove of theatrical honors for its depiction of political figure and Founding Father, Alexander Hamilton This melodic portrayal, has caught the consideration of the world in Lin Manuel Miranda’s take on addressing the accomplishments of the past figure, Hamilton, through exhibitions of rap and more. Hamilton, also discusses many points of views in which present it's wide variety of diversity and collaboration. In any textbook, you’ll learn the story through the basic context that Hamilton is a founding father who was killed by his arch enemy Aaron Burr. You never really get to learn who Burr is and even beyond that, who was important to Hamilton's rise and fall. We also get to meet key characters in his story such as,his wife in the songs, “Helpless”, and “Satisfied”, in points of views by both his wife, Eliza, and Eliza’s sister who is in love with Hamilton as well. In the songs, “Aaron Burr, Sir”, “Cabinet Battle #1”, and “The world was wide enough”, we see the development of Burr’s character, what he stands for, why him and Hamilton don’t get along and just see his side of the story. In terms of collaboration we can dive into more context of where these songs come about in terms of hip hop origin. There are clear examples shown from songs such as, “My Shot”, “Ten Duel Commandments”, and “Meet Me Inside”. These are all factors that add into Hamilton, The Revolution piece by piece, to create one iconic musical.
To start off with, we have an interesting aspect of collaboration; through sampling other artist’s. The lyrics of this musical, come packed with references of degrees of classic hip-hop and varying levels of ambiguity. Take the following songs as an example; “My Shot”, “Meet Me Inside”, and “Ten Duel Commandments”, these songs had the most prevalent song sampling. Within the process of writing these songs, the authors stated, “Hamilton is laced with these shout outs to the traditions that birthed it, both hip hop (DMX, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five) and musical theater (South Pacific, The Last Five Years). These serve, in part, as invitations, a signal to people from diverse backgrounds that the show is meant for them.” (94). To elaborate more, one of the very first examples of a song we bump into is, “My Shot”. In this melody, we are introduced to sampling of artist, Mobb Deep. In the song, “Shook Ones, PT II”, the lyrics, “I’m only 19 but my mind is older”, can also be found in the second verse of, “My Shot”. Moving further into the book we can also see that Lin Manuel has incorporated some more collaboration with other artists in his song, “Ten Duel Commandments”. This song was structured fairly similar to the song by Biggie Smalls, “Ten Crack Commandments”. According to Lin, “ ‘Ten Duel Commandments’, the influence could not be more direct or profound….The rules of dueling slip neatly into spots originally occupied by the rules of selling crack”(95). Moving on, a lot of fans interested in pop can easily spot the resemblance between Lin’s, “Cabinet Battles”, and Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, “The Message”. Overall, there are many songs in hamilton that have been interpolated with various other songs from different artists, and this helps us get a better understanding of where the songs were inspired from.
To dive in a bit deeper into the diversity within the collaboration, we see many instances where in Hamilton, the casting crew shows us their portrayal of the characters with who they hire. One very profound example is of actress, Reneè Elise Goldsberry who was casted as the role of Angelica Schuyler. According to the book, “She was a combination of Nicki Minaj and Desiree Armfeldt”(78). They wanted to cast Reneè first and foremost, for her ability to, “Think exactly that fast…Made Angelica come alive in a new way…The key to the song.”(79). Another key character role, Eliza was fulfilled by the actress, Phillipa Soo. ‘Pippa’, as they like to call her, was discovered at a stage adaption of War and Peace in which she held the main role of Natasha. Philippas’ comfortability on stage, and her ability to radiate off a warm and welcome tone, was what Lin Manuel found most compelling about her. He decided to immediately go with Pippa for Eliza’s role, he further stated, “Pippa has this sort of elegance and this lit-from-within-quality…She’s so poised, and she's in such control of what she can do, which is kind of amazing for an actor or actress of her age.”(108). The most example of all however, would be the symbolic gesture of having three of the president characters, be African American. The role of President Washington was filled by Chris Jackson. He was chosen to play this role because he displayed his true passion to pass along the story of, “Who he was, and trying to portray the truth in that”.(208). As much as Chris disagrees with what Washington is known for in his slavery past, he uses that to further dive into understanding the characters development. Chris uses this musical as his platform to send a very important message where Eliza sings how if Hamilton had the time he would’ve done something about slavery and, “Chris, as Washington, bows his head in shame. It’s his way on having Washington accept responsibility for what he did and didn't do”.(208). By far, the most iconic gesture that the casting crew has done was recognized by actor, Chris Jackson, when he said, “Plenty of people in America are UNCOMFORTABLE with a Black President. He also knows the symbolic power of Hamilton having three of them.”(208). The actors and actresses have been proved by Hamilton, The Revolution, that they don’t have to accurately look like the original characters. The physical attributes relate as little as possible in terms of accurate representation of the characters’ personalities.
Additionally, the factored in element of the musical’s characters beyond Hamilton himself, and Aaron Burr, contribute to the teamwork behind the story. As previously mentioned, a lot of standard textbook facts have depicted a basic storyline of the two infamously being each others arch enemies. The musical however, integrates a musical aspect of hip hop to bind the characters you never really got to know before, into a newfound respect for all the people who factored into Hamilton’s life. Hamilton’s dominance of lyrical references depicts Lin-Manuel Miranda’s heartfelt love and understanding of hip-hop. This allowed for the genre to be interweaved in so smoothly alongside a more traditional musical charm. The two sound mixtures, are perfectly integrated into one another. The element of awkwardness that sounds like it should've been there, is not prevalent. The song, “Satisfied”, interpolates a R&B melody and intense rapping behind a string based instrumental and followed by a chorus, ad libbing and backing up the vocals in a subdominant manner. The structure and sound of this rap, lets us meet Angelica Schuyler and understand where she stood in Hamilton’s life, more specifically, his love life. “Wait for It”, gently introduces the influence of more ethnic style descent music, just from it's repetitive pattern of stutter in the beat. The beat similarly echoes a Jamaican vibe to it. The upbeat, yet inspirational flow, allows the audience to be encaptured in Burr’s interaction of his affair with Theodosia. “The World Was Wide Enough” shows us a little less theatrical portion of the play. We see dabbles of autotune that strip away the old fashioned aspect we see in many of the other melodies. In this song, we can get Burr’s insight on how he feels after the duel. Burr’s character reveals his regret and his standing in history now due to his decisions during his known duel with Hamilton. Without this song, the story of Hamilton is usually ended on a very depressed note, leaving Burr in the shoes of a ‘villian’. The song however, paints the audience a vivid picture of what Burr actually went through because of the outcome and because of his actions, without the take on this event through the song, there really isn’t much legroom to sympathize with Burr.
All in all, we see many instances in Hamilton, The Revolution, where collaboration and the diversity in the art of teamwork, pieces together the musical in a very impactful manner. The messages, the voices, the story that this take on the history of the Founding Father, all adds into the idea that Hamilton was much more than what people made it out to be. The intricacy and the power of music involved in making Hamilton come to life was impacted by many different reasons. A few being, the sampling of songs and examples of other artists interweaved into Hamilton songs, The importance of personality when in search for an accurate representation of these characters by making sure not to hire based on physical traits, and the different styles of music and how they worked hand in hand with expressing the stories of our unsung members of the musical that work together to put the story of Hamilton’s life together. The whole musical as a whole, has become a one of a kind masterpiece of this century. Hamilton; The Revolution will be often remembered as, a revolutionary twist on history, and it was all thanks to the team and the creativity behind it all.