The Setup - "Alexander Hamilton" & The Question of Narrative Power
Hamilton opens with a question that haunts all national origin stories: "How does a bastard, orphan, son of a whore and a Scotsman, dropped in the middle of a forgotten spot in the Caribbean by providence impoverished get up and climb?"
This is Lin-Manuel Miranda asking: WHO GETS TO BE REMEMBERED? Who gets their story told? Whose narrative survives?
Nigeria's founding story has the same problem. We celebrate Nnamdi Azikiwe, Obafemi Awolowo, Ahmadu Bello, and Kwame Nkrumah (the "Big Four"), but how many know about Herbert Macaulay? Samuel Ajayi Crowther? Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti fighting for women's rights while the "official" founding fathers got the credit?
In "Alexander Hamilton," we meet a young immigrant with ambition. In Nigeria's founding, we meet men shaped by colonialism, educated abroad, returning to fight for independence. But like Hamilton, the question persists: who decided these men were the heroes?
The Enslaved Perspective - What Hamilton Doesn't Show
While Hamilton wrote about freedom, people he might have known were enslaved. While Nigeria's founders fought colonialism, ordinary people still had no voice in the "independence" they supposedly won.
What would a song from an enslaved person's perspective sound like in Hamilton?
"I am not throwing away my shot to escape I am not throwing away my life They talk of freedom while they own my body They write constitutions while I own nothing"
What would a song from a colonized farmer's perspective sound like in Nigeria's founding?
"They fight the British in their suits and offices While I pay taxes I can't afford They promise independence, they promise freedom But nothing changes for me, nothing at all"
We don't have these songs. That's the tragedy. These voices are erased not by accident but by design, the design of whose story gets told, whose voice counts, whose memory is preserved.
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The Enslaved Perspective - What Hamilton Doesn't Show
What would a song from a colonized farmer's perspective sound like in Nigeria's founding?
"They fight the British in their suits and offices While I pay taxes I can't afford They promise independence, they promise freedom But nothing changes for me, nothing at all"