Lin-Manuel Miranda is no stranger to the joys of Wawa hoagies and Tastykakes
The 'Hamilton' creator visited a North Philly music store to talk about his new star-studded concept album, 'Warriors' on his way to a Kamala Harris rally.
Lin-Manuel Miranda walked into Centro Musical, the premier salsa instrument and record shop in West Kensington, one afternoon this week with a few things on his to-do list.
Accompanied by his father, political consultant and author Luis Miranda, the Hamilton creator was stumping for Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign, and keen to talk about the insult directed to his father’s native island by a comedian at Donald Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden.
Miranda had spent the morning with college students at Clarkville Pizza in West Philly, and was making a pitstop at Centro before heading to a Harris rally at the Taller Puertorriqueño cultural center around the corner. There, he introduced himself by saying: “I’m not a politician, I’m an artist,” and urged Harris supporters to vote “like your life depends on it.”
The Tony- and Pulitzer Prize-winning multi-hyphenate was also in town with a project to promote. Warriors, written with Eisa Davis, is a concept album that reimagines The Warriors, the 1979 cult movie about a New York gang trying to make it home from the Bronx to Coney Island. Its star-studded voice cast incudes Ms. Lauryn Hill, Nas, Marc Anthony, Colman Domingo, Ghostface Killah, Jasmine Cephas-Jones, and Billy Porter.
Miranda, who owns the Drama Book Shop in Manhattan, talked shop with Centro owner Reinaldo Meléndez, whose store is full of guitars, güiros, CDs, cassettes, and LPs that share space with Puerto Rican flags and Roberto Clemente jerseys.
He took a picture of the Warriors LP displayed next to Anthony’s new album, Muevense, and texted it to the salsa superstar. Then he took a seat, ready to talk music and politics.
The conversation has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Why are you in Philadelphia today?
Because my vote doesn’t mean so much in New York City. I’m proud to be from New York City, but Pennsylvania is a swing state. The Puerto Rican community is so important here, the Latino community in Pennsylvania is so important. So this day has been on the books for months. And the fact that it coincides with the ugliness that came out of the Trump campaign rally at MSG just kind of intensifies the fervor I find as I get here.
What was your reaction to Tony Hinchcliffe calling Puerto Rico ‘a floating island of garbage’?
For Puerto Ricans, it’s not so much the joke as it’s that the Trump administration treated Puerto Rico like trash in the wake of [2017 hurricanes] Irma and Maria. It’s a reminder of how the island applied for aid, and Trump, when criticized, said, ‘They want everything done for them.’ It’s that feeling of waking up in the morning on Monday and being like: ‘What did they say this time? What is the racism of the day?’
I think it was a real wake-up call. Most of all, a reminder. It brought it all back for me. This feeling of being stepped on and being dismissed, this is what I remember from the Trump administration. So, we’re hopeful that it can be galvanizing in this next week, particularly here, where you have the second largest Puerto Rican population in the U.S.
» READ MORE: Lin-Manuel Miranda weighs in on racist Trump rally joke during Harris campaign stop in North Philly
You’ve had Philadelphia connections throughout your career.
Quiara Alegría Hudes, my cowriter for In the Heights, grew up in Philly and came from an amazing, vibrant Puerto Rican community she’s proud of. That’s how we became friends. We realized my northern Manhattan experience rhymed with her North Philly experience.
My freshman roommate in college was from Philly, so I learned about the joys of Wawa hoagies and Tastykakes. And I filmed a TV series no one ever saw here in 2013. It was called Do No Harm. [He played Dr. Ruben Marcado in the medical drama.] It was the lowest-rated show in the history of NBC.
I lived in the Sofitel Hotel by Rittenhouse Square and had the Shake Shack all to myself, because you guys don’t care about Shake Shack. You guys have your hoagie culture and amazing local food. So I had a Shake Shack to myself and probably gained 10 pounds.
Let’s talk about ‘The Warriors.’
I’m so happy to be in a record store, so happy to be holding a vinyl album. Particularly a Puerto Rican-owned record store. I saw this movie without permission, and that’s the way most kids see The Warriors.
How old are you?
I’m 44.
It came out in 1979, before you were born.
Yeah. By the time I saw it, it was on my friend’s older brother’s VHS cassette. And then my grandfather owned a video store in Vega Alta, Puerto Rico. Miranda Video. Those were my favorite summers, because I had my run of every movie in the store, and I would go back to Warriors again and again. It’s kind of my mental map of New York. The subway map in the movie is the first subway map I ever saw.
It’s beautifully shot. It’s what those subways looked like when I was growing up, covered in incredibly ornate graffiti. And it’s a catalog of all your New York fears: meeting the wrong cop at night, stepping into the wrong neighborhood at the wrong time, falling onto the train tracks.
What concept albums were you thinking of as you wrote with Eisa Davis?
It’s a love letter to Jesus Christ Superstar and Tommy and The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway. In the Latin music tradition, Reuben Blades has an amazing concept album called Maestra Vida. I think of De La Soul is Dead. A lot of our ’90s hip-hop albums were also concept albums. Prince Paul, A Prince Among Thieves. Even Ready to Die has a narrative.
So it doesn’t feel crazy to me to explore this as a concept album first. Like, do these songs work to tell the story? And we pulled out all the stops in terms of the guests. It was fun talking to the owners here about Marc Anthony and Luis Figueroa and Flaco Navaja and the incredible Latin artists we got.
This is the biggest thing you’ve done since the ‘In The Heights’ movie in 2021. You and the other filmmakers were accused of colorism, for employing light-skinned actors over Afro Latino ones. Did you take that in consideration as you cast ‘Warriors’?
That really coincided with the conversation happening so much in the Latin community, particularly in the wake of George Floyd in 2020. The movie met that conversation, and that was great … I also was working with lots of Afro Latino actors on Encanto, and on Vivo, that also came out that year. So it was like: This is not a charge that sticks to me, but I also was grateful for the conversation.
Every time I write something, I’m trying to get us on the board. I started writing musicals because I wanted a career in musical theater, and there were no parts for Latin actors besides West Side Story and Zoot Suit, which hardly ever gets done. So I’m always trying to get as much representation in everything I do, from Heights, through Hamilton, through this.
Will ‘Warriors’ be a musical?
Listen, I don’t want to be coy. Eisa and I are both theater artists, and we’ve both written musicals before. For me, what was liberating about doing it this way was we actually got the dream artists first. We have Ms. Lauryn Hill as Cyrus! We have Marc Anthony! We have people that would never do eight shows a week, exploring the material the first time we’re writing the material.
So I think it makes for a better score because we did it this way and we weren’t worried about who can we get. We just wrote the best songs we could. And then I think we’re open to exploring it, but we haven’t really started those conversations. It’s really been about getting this to the finish line.