Who Is Lin-Manuel Miranda? Lin-Manuel Miranda prepared for his elementary school’s piano recital for weeks, and tonight was the night. He’d settled on a song, practiced constantly, and mastered it. Now, with his dad in the crowd, seven-year-old Lin moved onto the duet bench, placed his hands on the keys, and played. Before he knew it, he finished the song and the audience erupted. He did it! Lin-Manuel loved hearing their applause. He didn’t want it to end.
“I know another one!”
Why stop when everyone was having a good time? Lin-Manuel, who friends called “Lin,” loved seeing the crowd smile. So, he played another. They were clapping again, maybe even louder this time. He played four more songs! Every time Lin finished one the audience clapped, but, eventually, his teacher led him offstage. Lin knew other kids deserved to have the same fun he did, so he agreed to step away. That night, Lin became a performer. He loved entertaining people, and he planned to keep doing it for many years.
A few years after the recital, Lin’s mom saw his talent in a Christmas performance alongside his church choir. She knew there were other kids singing, but in her mind, Lin had the spotlight. After talking it over, the Mirandas committed to supporting Lin’s artistic passions. Lin’s dad still hoped he would choose a stable career, like being a lawyer, but his mom was a little more open to Lin’s creativity. Thanks to their support and his own hard work, Lin would one day be a global superstar. But before he made it to the stage, he was just another talented Puerto Rican kid from New York City.
Chapter 1 The Unsinkable Lin-Manuel Lin-Manuel Miranda was born on January 16, 1980, to Luis A. Miranda Jr. and Dr. Luz Towns-Miranda. Luis had been born in Vega Alta, a small town in Puerto Rico, but came to New York City to study at New York University, where he met Luz Towns. Luz had been born in Puerto Rico but had moved to New York, just like Luis had. After they met, Luz became a doctor—-a clinical psychologist who works with people to improve their mental health. Luis worked with New York politicians including Mayor David Dinkins and Senator Hillary Clinton. At the time Luz and Luis met, Luz already had a daughter who was also named Luz, but who they called “Lucecita.” Luis and Lucecita bonded quickly. In 1979, just a few months after Luis and Dr. Luz started dating, they got married! Two months later, Luis adopted Lucecita. Lin was born the following year.
Luis took Lin’s name from a poem called “nana roja para mi hijo Lin-Manuel” (“red lullaby for my son Lin-Manuel”), written by a Puerto Rican poet named José Manuel Torres Santiago. The poem reflects on the future of Puerto Rico at the time of the Vietnam War and is addressed to the speaker’s son, named Lin-Manuel.
Lin grew up listening to all kinds of music. In Puerto Rico, his father had seen a movie adaptation of a musical he loved called The Unsinkable Molly Brown.
Puerto Rico or “Boriken” Puerto Rico is a Caribbean island about a thousand miles southeast of Miami, Florida, and is near Cuba, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic. The name “Puerto Rico” means “rich port” in Spanish and was given to the island by the Spanish who arrived to take it over. Before the Spanish took control of Puerto Rico, the island was called “Boriken” by one group of its Native peoples, the Tainos.
After the 1898 Spanish-American War, Spain ceded the island of Puerto Rico to the United States along with the Philippines and Guam. Today, Puerto Rico is a territory of the United States, and all Puerto Ricans are American citizens. But many Puerto Ricans feel that the United States has treated Puerto Rican residents unfairly. Puerto Rico has no representatives in Congress, and residents of the island cannot vote in general US presidential elections.
Puerto Rico’s political parties typically organize around the relationship the island should have with the United States going forward. The options for this relationship have usually included Puerto Rico becoming a state, separating as an independent nation, or keeping its status as a territory. A musical is a live performance in which characters use spoken dialogue, music, songs, and dances to tell a story. When Luis became a father, he made his family watch the movie musical with him all the time, instilling a love for the theater in Lin. Unfortunately, the Mirandas couldn’t afford to attend live shows in Broadway theaters very often. “Broadway” is the general name given to New York City’s main area for theaters. Within the Broadway district, there are dozens of professional theaters where musicals and plays are produced at the highest level.
Other, smaller shows in New York are typically referred to as “off-Broadway.” If a show gains enough attention from audiences, it will likely move from a smaller off-Broadway theater to one of the larger Broadway ones. Instead of attending these larger and often more expensive performances, the Mirandas listened to a lot of Broadway cast albums, which are recordings of all the songs performed in a musical theater production.
At age seven, Lin finally saw his first Broadway play named Les Misérables. The show is a story about injustices faced by poor and working-class people in France. In his home of Inwood, way up in the northern end of Manhattan, Lin was surrounded by similar New Yorkers who were trying to improve their family’s lives. Those families became some of his biggest influences, and their strength shined through in his later projects.
Sometimes young Lin expressed his love for New York in dramatic ways. When his parents sent him to a sleepaway camp at age ten, he wrote letters complaining to his parents about being unhappy and wanting to come home. Before he went to camp, Lin spent a lot of time inside watching TV, so his parents wanted him to enjoy a summer with other kids. He did make some good friends, but Lin loved his city and couldn’t bear to leave it for too long.
During Lin’s childhood, his interest in musical theater grew. While he was at Hunter College’s middle and high school from 1991 to 1998, he performed in several plays while still finding time to write his own. Off the stage, Lin was listening to a lot of hip-hop and R&B, which his school bus driver and sister played for him. He also carried a boom box throughout Hunter College high school, becoming known for his high-energy personality. He was always ready to put on a show! Some of the first hip-hop artists who influenced him were the Beastie Boys, Rakim, and the Sugarhill Gang.
New York City Hip-Hop The Bronx, New York, is considered the birthplace of hip-hop. On August 11, 1973, Clive Campbell, known as DJ Kool Herc, and his sister Cindy Campbell hosted a back-to-school party in a recreation room at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue. There, Herc’s friend, Coke La Rock, shouted attendees’ names while Herc played short snippets of live albums from artists like James Brown. Herc’s act went on to become famous around the Bronx and helped create a new style of music. Hip-hop culture came to include DJ’ing on the turntables, MC’ing at the mic, breakdancing, and graffiti.
While hip-hop has grown into a global sensation, many of the most beloved rappers and rap groups of all time are connected to New York City’s five boroughs. Some of the most notable include Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, the Notorious B.I.G., Jay-Z, Nas, the Wu-Tang Clan, A Tribe Called Quest, Slick Rick, Nicki Minaj, Mos Def, Big Pun, Fat Joe, Salt-N-Pepa, and Public Enemy. As he grew up, Lin found ways to bring together the working-class challenges, hip-hop sounds, and musical theater performances that inspired him. One of his most important influences was Jonathan Larson’s
Rent, a musical that used rock music and featured young New York artists struggling in the East Village while many of their friends were suffering from the AIDS epidemic, a deadly virus first reported in 1981.
Rent helped push modern rock music into theater alongside a few other shows. Lin saw
Rent when he was seventeen and was inspired by Jonathan Larson’s innovation. As he became more serious about theater, like Larson, he looked to bring the music that he grew up listening to into his work.
Jonathan Larson (1960–1996) Jonathan Larson was an American composer who was born in New York. He is best known for writing the 1994 musical Rent, which put modern rock music at the center of the story. The show became a hit among theater lovers, winning a Pulitzer Prize and four Tony Awards. Unfortunately, Larson would never see the success of the show. He died the night before previews began off-Broadway at the New York Theater Workshop. While developing Rent, Larson lived similarly to the struggling characters in his show, having quit his job at a diner before the play opened. Today, Rent and Larson’s other musical tick, tick . . . Boom! are two of the most acclaimed shows in modern theater.
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