Hunting for Treasure

Years ago, a friend of mine convinced me to audit a poetry class at the University of Minnesota on the poetry of Tin Pan Alley songs. (That course was the foundation for a book.) In between spirited debates about whether or not song lyrics can (or should) be separated from the music, we learned a lot of early 20th century pop culture and slang. The lyricists embedded clever puns and rhymes that often flew by unnoticed, all within the confines of a rigid 32-bar ABA structure.

Every so often, you can also hear a musical reference to great classical composers or fellow Tin Pan Alley songwriters, and I'm willing to bet that they aren't all accidental. Long before mashups were a thing, my brain used to mash up  "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man" and "Stormy Weather." I have often wondered if Harold Arlen was inspired by Jerome Kern's melody, or if it was a result of a snatch of melody stuck in his unconscious.

I was listening to a "special" podcast of The West Week Weekly, an interview with The West Wing fans Lin Manuel Miranda and Tommy Kail, (creators of the hip-hop musical, "Hamilton"). They got to talking about TWW references in "Hamilton." Lin said there is only one deliberate reference, the drum roll, but that fans are constantly finding TWW references in it. (There enough that hashtags and Tumblr pages are devoted to them.) 

photo from MacArthur Foundation

 As often as I hear "Hamilton," there is always something new. Just this week, I heard variations on "Daydream Believer" and "Don't Rain on My Parade." Lin said that when he was writing "Hamilton," he purposely embedded it with as many musical and cultural "ins" as he could to help the audience accept it. Many of them he annotated in the published libretto, Hamilton The Revolution, but more are unconscious, like those TWW references the fans keep finding.

Like the great Tin Pan Alley writers, Lin's genius lies in the subtlety of the rhymes and references. He often references the middle of a lyric or musical phrase. "Hamilton" is a musical treasure hunt.