Have you ever seen the YouTube video of Lin-Manuel Miranda singing what became the opening number of Hamilton at the White House? It was May 12, 2009, six years before the smash-hit musical about the life of Alexander Hamilton opened on Broadway, and Michelle and President Barack Obama were hosting a “White House Poetry Jam.”
Yes, a poetry jam. In which not only Miranda but also the jazz star Esperanza Spalding, the actor James Earl Jones, and the poet Mayda Del Valle all performed before an enthralled audience in the East Room.
“We’re here to celebrate the power of words and music to help us appreciate beauty, but also to understand pain, to inspire us to action, and to spur us on when we start to lose hope,” said the president in introducing the event.
With the current occupant of the White House planning to stage a UFC fight on the White House lawn and rejecting potential Kennedy Center honorees for being too “woke,” that era seems like an eon ago. Then again, the rapturous response to Hamilton when it first hit Broadway, 15 months before Donald Trump was elected, also seems like something out of an era lost to time—about which more shortly.
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Author: Joe Nocera
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