{"id":300,"date":"2020-06-08T18:43:19","date_gmt":"2020-06-08T18:43:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/21\/?p=300"},"modified":"2026-06-22T10:56:33","modified_gmt":"2026-06-22T10:56:33","slug":"broadway-rap-battles-and-the-crisis-of-historicity-lin-manuel-mirandas-hamilton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/21\/broadway-rap-battles-and-the-crisis-of-historicity-lin-manuel-mirandas-hamilton\/","title":{"rendered":"Broadway Rap Battles and the Crisis of Historicity: Lin-Manuel Miranda\u2019s Hamilton<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Konstantinos Blatanis<\/strong>*<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Abstract<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

Interest in this article revolves around Lin-Manuel Miranda\u2019s musical biography of Alexander Hamilton as both an occasion of contemporary commercial theatre and a cultural phenomenon which foregrounds issues of historical understanding but also constitutes an unconventional record of the crisis of historicity that defines its own moment. The study focuses on the distinctive mode in which the play co-opts rap and hip hop music for the purposes of a large-scale Broadway production and examines the ways in which African American music is thus employed in a work that ultimately betrays its historical specificity. Furthermore, the article interrogates the terms in which Hamilton invites spectators to engage anew with questions regarding who, on what grounds and to whose benefit may be granted the right to \u201crap\u201d the nation\u2019s story.
Keywords<\/strong>: Hamilton, Broadway musical, African American music, hip hop, historical understanding<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The long and varied history of the American musical is marked by the distinctive and often unexpected ways in which the genre intervenes in the public debate. As scholars Jessica Sternfeld and Elizabeth Wollman accurately note, no matter how \u201clight-hearted, escapist, frivolous and even embarrassingly corny [the musical may seem at first glance, it] can in fact serve as bold commentary on aspects of society\u201d (1). Indeed, it is music itself, the most prominent of its component elements and by all means \u201cthe ultimate making of any musical\u201d (Kerr qtd. in Warfield 244), that allows each individual occasion of the form to converse with its immediate historical conditions. Furthermore, music onstage contributes also in its own exclusive modes and, at times, in radical ways to matters and issues of historical understanding, on a larger and more general scale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the primary contentions of this article is that, similar to what historian Dominick LaCapra underlines about the value of the novel, it is instructive to address music in a play as an eloquent \u201cobject of study\u201d (History and Criticism <\/em>116) for historical interrogation. Over the course of the present decade, Lin-Manuel Miranda\u2019s phenomenally successful biography of Alexander Hamilton serves to exemplify, more intensely than any other instance of the contemporary American musical, the particular qualities, the assets as well as the limitations of such an approach.    <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ever since its world premiere at the Public Theatre, in February 2015, and its quick transfer to the Richards Rodgers Theatre on Broadway, in August of the same year, Hamilton: An American Musical <\/em>has been standardly recognized as the epitomic \u201chip hop musical\u201d that aspires to revolutionize both the genre and the collective understanding of the founding period.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Following Miranda\u2019s first attempt to employ hip hop music onstage with his play In the Heights<\/em> (2007), Hamilton <\/em>was welcomed as a venture that contributes decisively in \u201cdiversifying the Broadway musical aesthetically, musically and choreographically,\u201d but also as a work that \u201cenvision[s] a new world of Broadway and US society, one that is not post<\/em>-racial but racially inclusive and aware\u201d (Titrington Craft, \u201cCan We Leave\u201d 217).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is important to note right at the outset that not all critics and scholars converge in their appraisals of the show, yet few would disagree with the argument that \u201ca hugely popular work like Hamilton <\/em>may well influence America\u2019s visual, aural, and narrative image of the American Revolution and its aftermath for generations . . . finding its way into people\u2019s heads through the catchy soundtrack and its memes\u201d (Romano and Bond Potter 6).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Video 1<\/h6>\n\n\n\n
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