Word: hopful
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...turned their noses up, and their iPods off, at show-tunes-style musicals. One of them, Passing Strange, is an idiosyncratic mix of rock concert and theatrical bildungsroman, presided over by a Los Angeles-based alt-rocker named Stew. The other, In the Heights, is a Latin- and hip-hop-flavored love letter to the Hispanic neighborhood of Washington Heights in upper Manhattan. The two shows have little in common except that neither could by any stretch of the imagination be mistaken for Phantom of the Opera...
...musical theater" while acting in shows at his New York City grade school (the short Puerto Rican sixth-grader played Conrad Birdie in Bye Bye Birdie). He started writing In the Heights when he was living in the Latino house at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn., incorporating the hip-hop that he had grown up listening to as well as the Latin styles of favorite artists like Rubén Blades, Gilberto Santa Rosa and Juan Luis Guerra. "I wanted to write music that told stories as well as those songwriters tell stories," he says, "but onstage...
...shadow of the George Washington Bridge, introducing and interacting with a dozen characters, from the college girl who disappoints her parents by dropping out of Stanford to the aging neighborhood matriarch who wins $96,000 after buying a lottery ticket. Miranda's songs glide effortlessly between mellow hip-hop, salsa dance numbers and Latin-flavored arias that express the frustrations, dreams and community pride in Miranda's family-friendly world. No pimps or drug dealers on these mean streets; In the Heights is both a hip and an improbably wholesome show, whose moral--like that of Passing Strange--is "There...
...Harvard’s ban on chalk—the stuff of hop-scotch and four-square—is an anachronistic attempt to preserve a nonexistent dream of a pristine Yard. Let’s let that attempt cede to a dream of a campus environment teeming with messages. The power of the pen and the power of the chalk stub are not so far apart...
...relationship with funk music. This relationship reached its peak in 1973 with the album “Headhunters,” whose opener (“Chameleon”) and funk version of an earlier Hancock track (“Watermelon Man”) influenced R&B and hip hop artists for decades to come. His 1983 mainstream single, “Rockit,” won a Grammy for best R&B instrumental and several MTV Awards for its robotics-centered video. Most recently, Hancock was featured in another music video, organized by Black Eyed Peas member Will.I.Am...