Hamilton through a Brazilian perspective
The first time I heard about the Broadway musical Hamilton was when a friend of mine talked to me about it. He heard about the Lin-Manuel Miranda’s play in a brazilian podcast, and couldn’t stop singin’ the songs.
At first, I was like “Dude, I don’t even know who this Alexander Hamilton is”, but then, I gave it a chance, and listened to some of the songs. I am not a hip hop person, I grew up listening to music like The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Green Day, and some famous MPB (Popular Brazilian Music), like Tom Jobim, Chico Buarque, etc. So, my first contact with Hamilton was through King George’s song, “You’ll Be Back”. And I really love it!
I mean, the metric, the lyrics; they really reminded me some classic english rock n’ roll, like The Beatles themselves. But my friend warned me: “It’s the only song in that kind of style; the other ones are really more of a hip hop style”. So, I was like “okay, I’ll give it a chance later”.
The weeks were passing by, it was new years eve, and my friend was still talking and talking and talking about stuffs like “not throwing away his shot in 2017”. So I decided to listen to some of the songs he recorded and posted on Smule, and I like it (specially “My Shot” — my favorite one).
In January and February, normally, I reserve some time to watch the Oscars’ movies. After that, I was really bored, so, I thought to myself “Well, I am not throwing away my shot. I’m gonna hear that podcast about Hamilton”. And…
OH
MY
GOD!
All the references, all the songs. The characters. The metrics. Everything was so perfect and meticulously planned. “Lin-Manuel Miranda is a freakin’ genius”, I thought to myself. Of course, after the podcast, I had to watch the play.
I’ve never thought I would like a musical as much as I enjoyed La La Land. I am not a musical person, but La La Land hooked me. However, Hamilton made me fall in love!
I’m gonna tell you something about Brazil: we do not study Alexander Hamilton during History classes in school. I had no idea who the hell that guy was. And still, I felt like he was the greatest relevant character ever born. As in the United States, we have a Independence story as well. And, as a brazilian who loves de US pop culture, I have to say: we not only need more incentives to do more good works in the movies, we need some Lin-Manuel Miranda, to bring back that new state of art, made with history and contemporary subjetcs.
There were times when we used to have good musicals in here. Chico Buarque was responsible for writing the songs for the play “Opera do Malandro”. It was real politics, it was really historical.
Unfortunately, we don’t see works like that nowadays (at least not as famous as it used to be).
We need more Hamiltons in the theaters, on the internet, on the radio. Everywhere! We need more history in a modern pop culture context.
Hamilton reminds us the importance of remembering our past. Specially in times like the ones we’re living.
“ Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” (George Santayana)
