ALEXANDER HAMILTON
“Alexander Hamilton” is the opening number for the 2015 musical Hamilton, a musical biography of American Founding Father Alexander Hamilton, which premiered on Broadway in 2015. Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote both the music and lyrics to the song. This song features “alternately rapped and sung exposition”. (More from Wikipedia)
In a post entitled “How Eloquence Made History Class Cool Again” in the blog Rhetoric, Media and the Civic Life, Samantha Biel notes that Lin-Manuel Miranda’s performance at the White House in 2009 was almost word-for-word from the opening song “Alexander Hamilton” in Hamilton:
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?
. . .
Then a hurricane came, and devastation reigned
Our man saw his future drip, dripping down the drain
Put a pencil to his temple, connected it to his brain
And he wrote his first refrain, a testament to his pain
Well, the word got around, they said, this kid is insane, man
Took up a collection just to send him to the mainland
Get your education, don’t forget from whence you came and
The world is gonna know your name, what’s your name, man?
Alexander Hamilton
(September 2016)
