Welcome to a new Enuffa.com feature called Late to the Party, where I discuss a movie, an album, a recording artist, a book, what-have-you, that for me was an acquired taste of the tardiest kind. Something everyone else seemed to get right away, but for which I was slow on the uptake. Case in point, Lin-Manuel Miranda's epic Broadway musical Hamilton
....
As with so many artistic ventures that seem to come out of nowhere and take the world by storm, I was initially quite resistant to
Hamilton when I first became aware of it. Not really being a musical theater enthusiast (I like some musicals, but it's a pretty select few) and most certainly not being a hip-hop guy (Aside from Outkast there's very little in this genre that interests me), the idea of a rap musical centered around one of the less celebrated founding fathers didn't exactly pique my interest. Couple that with the almost hysterical devotion this show has generated since its January 2015 debut, not to mention the astronomical prices being charged for tickets, and my first reaction was something along the lines of "Get the fuck outta here with this...."
Fast-forward two years, and my wife finally gave the Cast Recording a listen after much prodding from a close friend who was already obsessed with the show (We'll call her Shamilton). By the third or fourth go-round my wife was all, "Justin, you HAVE to listen to this." "Yeah yeah yeah, whatever," I replied. Then one weekend we had a drive up to the beach, roughly 80 minutes each way, and she chose that as the time to make me a captive audience. I'd been expecting an hour-long soundtrack album, not realizing
Hamilton had no dialogue outside of the songs, and said, "Jeezus, how long is this thing??" So I listened to it front-to-back and found it mildly interesting. I'd be lying if I said it blew me away the first time. The music was so densely composed and covered so much ground, and I wasn't sure who was singing what to whom, that a lot of it was in one ear and out the other.
But like so much of the best art, the
Hamilton album isn't about instant gratification. It slowly burrows its way in, and only after you've become familiar with the story being told and fully absorbed the music does it yield its true rewards.
About a week later, after hearing the album again in the background at a pool party (I will say this stuff doesn't make for the best passive listening experience), I decided to give
Hamilton a really honest try on my own iPhone, with no distractions. And goddammit, everyone else was right. I was wrong.
As a double album,
Hamilton is a grandly concieved, meticulously detailed, obstinately ingenious concept record about the rise and fall of this underappreciated co-architect of the American experiment. The 47 tracks cover the ambitious Hamilton's journey from orphaned immigrant (born in the West Indies, grew up in the Caribbean) to Revolutionary War officer to the first Secretary of the Treasury, and depict his numerous sweeping contributions to America's inception, as well as his various political and personal battles while helping shape the ungainly, chaotic system of government known as democracy. Indeed,
Hamilton makes no effort to lionize the founding fathers; they, like all human beings, are flawed, ego-driven, and prone to mistakes.
