Who lives? Who dies? Who tells your story?
I was determined to somehow tie Hamilton into our ongoing discussions on trauma, theology, and, inspired by Dr. Newby, the voice of the people in our liturgy. If you haven’t already seen it, please do yourself a favor and watch the cast of Hamilton’s performance at the Grammy’s via the video above.
The opening number begins with these lines of verse:
How does a bastard
Orphan
Son of a whore and
A Scotsman
Dropped in
The middle of a forgotten
Spot in
The Caribbean by Providence
Impoverished
In squalor
Grow up to be a hero and a scholar?
If you haven’t been obsessing over Hamilton with the rest of us, it is a period drama “about the political intrigues of the early Republic, starring a cast of mostly black and Latino actors, with a score steeped in hip-hop,” written and starring Lin-Manual Miranda. In my recent internet scouring, I found an interesting article in the NY Times that comments on the validity of this opening question and the witty cadence with which it is offered. The author goes on to remark on the theatrical landmark of the show that is stirring thinking with questions like the opening one around popular culture and the stories and events of our history.
In the NY Times article, the author calls attention to the cast being primarily people of color in what are historically white characters:
The crucible of American popular theater was the minstrel stage, where white actors blacked up to perform racist caricatures of African-Americans. ‘‘Hamilton’’ flips minstrelsy on its head, offering sympathetic and insightful portrayals of the archetypal white Americans, the founding fathers and mothers, by a cast composed almost entirely of people of color. ‘‘The show reflects what America looks like now,’’ Miranda says.
(Brilliant.)
Furthermore, there’s this idea of hip-hop as the music of the Revolution. The creative genius behind it, Miranda said hip-hop as the score just felt right. This had me thinking about Dr. Newby, who had us all singing “Good News, Chariot’s a Comin’ ” in an effort to help us understand the essence of the music and the story differently.
“That melody is pressing something into your humanity,” Dr. Newby said. “We can’t expect different cultures to come together if we don’t sing each other’s songs.”
Something about this felt strikingly similar to what Miranda is doing through the hip-hop of Hamilton, inviting the cast and audience to think about the Revolution, American history, and the hip-hop culture of black and Latino communities differently, by bringing it all together in one brilliant liturgy.
In Shelly Rambo’s book, she references Cornel West’s writing on the problem of most American Christian churches who smooth over the fact that on Holy Saturday God is dead in a rush to victory and good news. Rambo writes, “Smoothing over this day is tied to a larger smoothing over of oppression, violence, and the injustices of history. For West, the forgetting of Holy Saturday symbolizes the elisions of history, of the truths that are, so to speak, swept under the rug.” There’s something about what Dr. Newby is talking about and what Lin-Manual Miranda is doing through Hamilton that is pulling the oppressive and unjust truth of our history out from under the rug.
Hamilton closes with the number ‘‘Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story’’ — what the NY Times author called a reflection on “the formation and transmission of historical narratives.” It’s sending the audience home humming and singing, just like Dr. Newby did, with questions about our history, about our liturgy (“work of the people”), and how these truths shape how our own stories are told — or sung.
