By Michael Paulson
“The Warriors,” a 1979 film about a group of gang members fighting their way home to Brooklyn from the Bronx in New York, isn’t the most brutal movie ever made, but it’s not exactly Sesame Street either — when it was first released, it was blamed (on pretty flimsy evidence) for inciting violence. And yet, somehow, Lin-Manuel Miranda found himself watching the movie when he was 4, thanks to a friend’s older brother.
Sure, the experience was a little scary. But the film also stuck with him. Miranda, like any number of New Yorkers raised in the ’80s, treasures the sights and sounds of a bygone city preserved in the film, as well as its empathy for its characters. (If some of the gang members seem heroic, well, the story, from a novel by Sol Yurick, is based on an ancient Greek military narrative by Xenophon, “Anabasis.”)
Now, after a pivot to television and film, the “Hamilton” creator has spent the last two-plus years working with playwright and performer Eisa Davis to create a “Warriors” concept album.
“You write the things that won’t leave you alone, and this won’t leave me alone,” Miranda said in a joint interview with Davis, conducted at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.
The album was released Friday by Atlantic Records.
What is ‘The Warriors’ about?
Miranda offers a succinct plot summary: “All the gangs of New York are meeting in the South Bronx for this unprecedented peace summit. Cyrus, the charismatic leader who has called the summit, is assassinated. The assassin blames the Warriors, and the Warriors have to fight their way home to Coney [Island], while every other gang in the city is trying to kill them.”
But for him, there’s more to the film than the plot. “It’s a snapshot of a New York in our memories. It’s this Technicolor nightmare of New York that is genuinely beautiful.”
Davis, who knew of, but had never seen, the film before Miranda asked her to collaborate with him, called the story “primal,” and said she sees it, fundamentally, as “about courage.”
“It’s a fantasy that you can fight your way home, and win,” she said.
Who is on the album?
There are 35 main characters, so that means lots of voices. Lauryn Hill voices Cyrus, the peace-seeking gang leader whose murder spurs the story’s action. Among the others are Marc Anthony, Busta Rhymes, Nas, Cam’ron, RZA, Stephen Sanchez, Colman Domingo and Ghostface Killah. There are also a number of Broadway alums, including Amber Gray, Casey Likes, Billy Porter and Phillipa Soo.
What do the songs sound like?
The album, with 26 songs over 80 minutes, was produced by Mike Elizondo, and executive produced by Nas, and features an array of genres: rap and hip-hop, salsa and merengue, ska and sounds from ballroom culture, R&B and funk. The boy band inspired gang has some KPOP mixed in. The first words on the album come from the dancehall performer Shenseea, a nod to the Jamaican roots of hip-hop; she plays a DJ who has a bit of a narrator-like role in the film and on the album. There’s even a bit of metal, for Luther, who is voiced by Kim Dracula.
Why a concept album and how did it come about?
Miranda acknowledges that the whole notion of an album is old-fashioned. But, he said, “I’m trying to recapture what it felt like listening to cast albums when I was a kid. For me, in addition to being a love letter to the movie, this is a love letter to those concept albums — ‘Tommy,’ ‘Jesus Christ Superstar,’ ‘The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway’ by Genesis.”
Miranda and Davis hope audiences will try listening to it straight through.
“That’s not the only way,” Davis said, “but we want people to spend time on this journey.”
Miranda recalls that in 2009, a friend emailed him and said, “Warriors:The Musical?” Miranda thought it was a terrible idea. “I wrote him back and said, ‘I love “The Warriors.” It’ll never work. Here’s why.’” But the seed was planted, and Miranda said that, after he finished “Hamilton” and “Moana,” “I had a moment to think, ‘What do I want to write next?’ and ‘Warriors’ had taken over. I knew that I wanted to figure out how to make it work.”
Why make the Warriors women?
In the film, the Warriors are men. On the album, they are women.
Miranda said his initial inspiration was Gamergate — the online harassment of women in the videogaming industry. “These extremely online dudes were doxxing women just for the cruelty and the chaos of it,” he said. “And when that was happening, I remember thinking, ‘That’s like Luther in Warriors. He shoots Cyrus, points at the Warriors, and said they did it, go get them. And suddenly the Warriors’ lives are ruined, and they have to fight their way home with every dude in the city trying to kill them.’ And I think that’s when my brain made the gender flip.”
Davis has another reference point — a gang summit in the Bronx, in 1971, called the Hoe Avenue peace meeting. “It’s so moving that there was this peace meeting,” she said. But, also, “The women who were at that peace meeting were made to sit in the back, and the gangs that were all femme were not even allowed to come into that meeting. So in some ways, I feel like this is a vindication for them.”
There are other changes, as Miranda and Davis imagined their own array of New York gangs. “With all due respect,” Davis said, “the film has a lot of misogyny and a lot of homophobia, and that went over in 1979 for some people, but I can’t brook that.” Their Bizzies (a version of the Lizzies, an all-female gang in the film) are boy-band-like, and their Turnbull ACs are influenced by the Fania All-Stars.
Will it become a stage show?
Miranda and Davis say there is no director and no producer attached at this point, and they don’t know how exactly they would adapt the album for the stage. “We’re just listening, and wanting to let this settle,” Davis said.
Miranda said he “would like to keep exploring it.”
“I can’t predict what the world does with things,” he said. “I know that this was the most freeing way to explore telling the story, and then we’ll see. If it ends the day it comes out, we’ve had the best time making this thing.”
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