فصل 01

ACT I

“I am a stranger in this country. I have no property here, no connexions.”

Alexander Hamilton, 1780

Chapter one.

ON THE ORIGINS of REVOLUTION, BOTH NATIONAL & MUSICAL, with Reference to OPENING NUMBERS & WHITE HOUSE RAPS.

Lin could see president Obama, but President Obama couldn’t see Lin.

Standing at the back of the East Room, the 29-year-old actor/rapper/writer gazed at some of the most celebrated figures in American culture. James Earl Jones was there, and the musician Esperanza Spalding, and the novelist Michael Chabon.

Some of them had performed in the program that night, “An Evening of Poetry, Music, and the Spoken Word,” others were honored guests, sitting around the tables that filled the White House’s ceremonial ballroom. It was May 12, 2009, one of the first cultural events of the Obama administration, and an early fulfillment of the new president’s promise to celebrate America’s artists.

Lin had been asked to close the program. That was an honor, but it also meant that he had to wait all night to take the stage.

Except for going on a tour a few years earlier, that night was his first experience of the White House, his first look at the East Room, where Abigail Adams had hung her laundry, where James Madison had held cabinet meetings, where Abraham Lincoln had lain in state.

At last he got his cue. He walked through the crowd, passed by the president, the first lady, and their daughters, and climbed to the stage. “I’m thrilled the White House called me tonight,” he said. He was also terrified.

The event’s producers had asked him to perform a song from his musical In the Heights, which was still running on Broadway, and which reflected themes that the new administration wanted to celebrate: family, the importance of home, the vibrancy of the Latino community.

Lin had a different idea. Instead of one of the well-tested songs that was drawing applause eight times a week, in a show that had won four Tony Awards, he wanted to try something new: a song that he had never performed in public, and hardly ever in private.

Lin gripped his mic and prepared the crowd for what they were about to hear. I’m actually working on a hip-hop album–a concept album, about the life of someone who embodies hip-hop,” he said.

Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton.

You can see what happened next on YouTube where video of the performance has been viewed more than one million times.

As Lin began to rap, the first lady took up his invitation to snap along. President Obama didn’t snap: He watched, smiling. When the song ended, he was the first one on his feet.

The ovation owed a lot to the showbiz virtues on display: the vibrant writing, Lin’s dynamic rapping, the skillful piano accompaniment from his friend Alex Lacamoire. But something else was in the air, something that would become clearer in the years to come.

Sometimes the right person tells the right story at the right moment, and through a combination of luck and design, a creative expression gains new force. Spark, tinder, breeze.

That night, Lin reintroduced people to the poor kid from the Caribbean who made the country rich and strong, an immigrant who came here to build a life for himself and ended up helping to build the nation. He is the prototype for millions of men and women who followed him, and continue to arrive today.

You can look up facts and figures that demonstrate the vast and growing importance of the immigrants to our national life: that 13 percent of the population is foreign-born, which is near an all-time high; that one day soon, there will no longer be majority and minority races, only a vibrant mix of colors.

Or you could just look around the East Room that night, and listen to the performance, and consider what made it possible.

In 1959, a young man came to the United States from Kenya, fell in love with a Kansas girl, and fathered a son who grew up to fulfill the American promise that any kid, however unlikely, can be president.

In 1973, another young man came here from Puerto Rico, learned English, started a family, and, one night in 2009, watched his son receive a standing ovation from the president of the United States.

In 1967, yet another young man came here with a fierce gift for rhythm, a knack for powerful sound systems, and countless warm memories of how music drew people together back home in Jamaica.

He started throwing parties in his new Bronx neighborhood, creating a sound that would one day give Luis Miranda’s son a way to perform for Barack Obama Sr.’s son at the White House.

Like immigrants before and since, Clive Campbell reinvented himself when he came to America, which is why it is as DJ Kool Herc that a grateful nation honors him today as the first o founding fathers of hip-hop.