It is uncommon in today’s day and age to see contemporary music, hip hop, and musical theatre come together. A once small album that was released, fueled a fire to create a perfect equilibrium through the median of musical Broadway to form one of the most intriguing and rich musicals of our generation. This musical is about a “founding father, who got a lot farther, by being a lot smarter, by being a self starter.” However, it wasn’t George Washington or Benjamin Franklin, but rather the less popular Alexander Hamilton.

The musical, about his rise and fall, ties to the cultural demand of our society in the United States. How Hamilton went from a boy in the Caribbeans, to Washington’s right hand man, becoming the founder of National Bank ending of with the death of the protagonist.  However, the result wasn’t just creating a successful musical but also the revival of Alexander Hamilton himself.

The creator, Lin-Manuel Miranda, having past experiences with his 1999 musical,  In the Heights, uses his previous knowledge, music he was fond of as a child and his life experience to create this masterpiece.

Additionally, in an interview with Charlie Rose, Miranda describes how most knowledge of Hamilton was “in a duel with [Aaron Burr], he was on the 10 dollar bill, but really I was just browsing the biography section.” No one knows his story. That was all that this “right-hand man” of the first president was known for in today’s age. It was the musical itself that turned the eyes of the people today upon Hamilton.

His story itself is more that just a paragraph in a history textbook or raps in the musical, but a series of events that single-handedly changed the course of American.  Aspects of his life like the sensationalized first American sex scandal, the Reynolds Pamphlet and The Battle of New York during the Revolutionary War, are just a handful of instances which led to great changes in America. This does not include how he fought for the National Bank system, and firing straight up in his duel with Burr to avoid killing him or guiding George Washington to declare neutrality during the rising tension with France and Great Britain.

It can be said that both Hamilton and Lin-Manuel Miranda took advantage and took their shot to prove themselves. Miranda noticed how history becomes “who lives, who dies, who tells your story,” as quoted in the final song in the musical, and decided to revive the story of arguably one of the most important founding fathers.