SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — On a recent whirlwind visit to Puerto Rico, Lin-Manuel Miranda snuck away for a moment to walk the block where his grandparents once lived.
Visiting takes the “Hamilton” creator back to childhood summers he spent in Vega Alta, a municipality about a 30-minute drive west of San Juan, idling the muggy days alone while his grandparents worked.
He passed the time writing songs and poems on his grandmother's roof or watching
movies in his grandfather's video store. The family sometimes visited the theater to see his great-uncle, an actor, perform.
Those summers made Puerto Rican culture “inseparable to me from my own journey as an artist,” Miranda, 45, told The Associated Press. “I still feel so connected to this place as a writer and as an artist.”
When Hurricane Maria devastated the archipelago in 2017, Miranda felt called to support Puerto Rican artists.
A 2019 two-week run of his acclaimed Broadway musical “Hamilton” in San Juan raised $22 million for the Flamboyan Arts Fund, a collaboration between the Miranda family and the Flamboyan Foundation. The money has supported hundreds of Puerto Rican artists and organizations.
At a San Juan festival celebrating the grantees this month, Miranda spoke with The Associated Press about his connection to Puerto Rico, the 10th anniversary of “Hamilton,” and one of Puerto Rico's other superstars, the Latin music phenomenon Bad Bunny.
The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
There was just radio silence, which was the scariest thing. There was no cell service, no internet, no images coming out of Puerto Rico for a little while.
The first time I heard my family was alive was a Facebook picture of my uncle in a relief line, moving boxes. We all sort of cried with relief once we saw that someone was around.
I just started writing. I was like, "This is going to be really bad. I don’t know if my family’s alive and we’re going to have to raise as much money as possible."
I wrote a song “ Almost Like Praying " that named all of the municipalities. It became my way of not freaking out: Let me see how many towns I can make rhyme and if I can fit them all into two verses and two choruses.
We’d always planned to debut a “Hamilton” production in Puerto Rico. The conversation instantly became, “How can ‘Hamilton’ help Puerto Rico?” How can this thing that is so successful bring eyeballs and money to the island?
Artists get left out of the conversation. Puerto Rico has exported so many brilliant artists into the world. We wanted to make sure they were not forgotten in relief efforts.
But really it was like, this is the lane in which we can be most useful. It’s really important to our civic life and civic health.
Art gives people hope. I think it's our best vessel for empathy with our fellow human beings. It’s our best means of escape when the world is too much.
With the 10th anniversary of “Hamilton,” one of the things we did was raise as much money as possible for the “Immigrants: We Get The Job Done” coalition, including $150,000 for organizations in Puerto Rico that are helping with everything from undocumented women facing physical abuse to fighting in the courts on behalf of undocumented immigrants.
We’ve got to have the backs of the people who are fighting the good fights. The organizations that already exist and have been doing this work for a long time.
It just gives us too much back. Every time we come here, we get to experience more art that was made possible because of Flamboyan.
One of the great exports of Puerto Rico is its art and its artists, and that’s across every medium. To invest in that is a good investment. If you have ever enjoyed a Bad Bunny song, if you have ever enjoyed “Hamilton,” if you have ever enjoyed the work that comes from this island and its descendants, to invest in that future is important.
I think it’s brilliant. I’m so grateful he exists. It’s very rare you hear an album and go, “Oh, this is an instant classic.”
It deals with that struggle of change. It wrestles with all the big things, and it’s banger after banger.
Then, to follow that up with an “Eras” tour that never leaves Puerto Rico, because that’s essentially what this is. It’s an “Eras”-level event, but he made everyone come to our island. It actually further fulfills the themes of the album.
It’s been very exciting and heartening to watch.
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