Stoking Curiosity with a Cast Album

Can we all just agree we’re out of superlatives for Hamilton? They’re all well deserved, by the way.  Every. Single. One.  Inadequate, even.  Don’t judge me because I saw Hamilton twice last year, and will go back later this year (also twice).  There are at least a million reasons for this, but two big – actually, small – reasons surprised me: my eleven and nine year old boys.  The thing is, I’m pretty sure the Hamilton Original Broadway Cast Album has made them smarter.

OK, real talk: they don’t have a higher IQ or anything.  But they know a lot more, in the short sliver of time since Hamilton came into their lives.  Much has been made of the amazing, unprecedented matinee program planned for NYC high school students. And social media is filled with adorable not-yet-kindergarteners reciting the show’s lyrics. Turns out, the Hamilton experience is an extraordinary elementary grade education too.

My second time seeing the show coincided with the release of the soundtrack, when the radius of People Who Understand About Hamilton expanded exponentially. I was determined that my sports-obsessed, non-theatrical, hadn’t-studied-American-history-yet kids would join them. It became a personal mission that they love the show as much as I do.  I connected the soundtrack to a speaker in our kitchen, where it played on loop for weeks, and got to work.

Cut to four months later. My boys wake up rapping Cabinet Battles. Long car trips are defined by whether we can hear all, some or none of Act II. TV shows are muted to hear the soundtrack better; all other music – what other music? – is abandoned. There are brother wrestling matches to see who will choose the next song (their mama likes to listen in order, thank you). They pore over Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Twitter posts for updates. They check out Making Mondays on Periscope during Monday Night Football to see if Leslie Odom, Jr. will sing something (he does). An out-and-out conversion has taken place. They’re listening to the soundtrack as I type this. Swear.

But something unexpected happened during this brainwashing process. My ‘tween boys suddenly wanted to chat – about history.

Their curiosity started gradually, then gained momentum, veering toward the insatiable. I’m certain I’m not the only mom who has spent the better part of the past few months Googling and Wikipeding not only big picture facts and timelines, but tiny details that would interest only PhDs and serious history nerds.

Rapid fire, faster than I can keep up: “Mom, so what happened when General Charles Lee was court martialed?” Um… “Did he have any kids? Weren’t they embarrassed?” Well … it doesn’t say … “What’s Rochambeau?” He’s a who, not a what … “Why did John Jay get sick and not write more Federalist Papers?” They didn’t really have great medicine then … “Was there any alternative to the Reynolds Pamphlet?” An easy one! Fidelity!

I try to answer all of their questions, but sometimes I’m driving and can’t look up “why does James Madison always cough” on my phone. So we research together later, at home and on location. Trips to Hamilton Grange in Harlem are requested and fulfilled. The Batmobile at the New York Historical Society Museum is ignored in favor of Hamilton and Burr’s dueling pistols.  Instead of yet another World Series encyclopedia, Hamilton biographies are checked out of the school library.

Their sports analysis was Hamiltized. Overheard on the basketball court: “that was such an AHam move.” Their upcoming game in you-can-guess-where has been dubbed “The Battle of Yorktown.” They debate which characters would play tight end or wide receiver if there was a Hamilton fantasty football team. When Chris Jackson sang the national anthem at CitiField, they fleetingly considered rooting for the Mets. Because, you know, GW and all.

Four months into our collective fascination, my boys’ vocabulary has evolved. I pause the soundtrack to define inimitable, polymath, intransigent and every third word in Washington’s farewell address. There is an all-around increased use of the word “sir” (with all semblance of intelligence negated when they direct it at me – I explained only Marcy from the Peanuts gets to call a girl “sir”). And yes, they learned a whole bunch of new curses, but can use them in context, with rhyme and cadence!

Soundtrack memorized, they got curious about the show’s web of cultural references. I explained the basic plot of Macbeth to my fourth grader, who listened with eyes wide rather than rolling. My husband and I primed them on a history of hip hop beyond the background music of Xbox NBA2K16. When they watched a clip from Amadeus on rapgenius.com’s annotation of the soundtrack – leading to discussion about Mozart – I realized I could connect almost any topic to the show, and they would follow me there.

We have several weeks to go before we see Hamilton together. When I bought our tickets, frantically, sweating, the minute they went on sale – I knew it would be a chance to experience greatness on Broadway as a family. But it also gave us a chance to enjoy greatness of another kind this year: a framework for conversations with our elementary school aged boys about politics, theater, music, immigration, race and history.  The newspaper suddenly makes sense to them (or as much sense as the news can make to any of us these days). So does the presidential election, our rabbi’s sermon, and their social studies homework, as tied in to the plot and lyrics of Hamilton. That’s something that transcends two hours and 45 minutes on Broadway. It has, to quote the play, “opened doors that were previously closed, bros.” A shared musical theater experience, even before they’ve heard the first note live.