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?
Instead of just celebrating the founding, what if we wrote songs about:
"The Woman Who Should Have Been There" - about Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti "The Farmer's Resistance" - about ordinary people's anti-colonial struggle "The Coup" - about when the system broke "What's Left of Us" - about post-independence disappointment "The Song They Silenced" - about whose voices got erased
These songs would tell a different history. Not better (both are partial), but more honest about contradictions, failures, and what we actually lost when we chose certain narratives over others.
America doesn't have a musical about slavery from the enslaved perspective. Nigeria doesn't have a song about women's contributions. Until we do, the founding story remains incomplete.
ifiokambrose
1 Comments
The Songs We Should Write (A Challenge)
Instead of just celebrating the founding, what if we wrote songs about: