‘Hamilton’ Creator Lin-Manuel Miranda Wrote New Cantina Music for ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’
Figrin D'an and the Modal Nodes from the original ‘Star Wars’
Looks like the Star Wars cantina has a new regular: Lin-Manuel Miranda, creator and star of the hip-hop Broadway sensation Hamilton. On last night’s Tonight Show, director J.J. Abrams revealed that Miranda composed music for a scene in Star Wars: The Force Awakens that bears more than a little resemblance to that Mos Eisley bar where Han shot first — and where a certain earworm of an alien jam was introduced to the world. The songwriter confirmed the news on Twitter after the show:
We did. Worked on it between 6pm & 7:30 on 2 show days for the past 2 months. JJ is the best. Can’t wait to see. https://t.co/pPYu8nRsxI
— Lin-Manuel Miranda (@Lin_Manuel)
That was exciting. Didn’t even know it would be public until 6:30 tonight. It will take me longer than a Sarlacc to digest this.
— Lin-Manuel Miranda (@Lin_Manuel)
During his appearance on Jimmy Fallon’s late-night show (watch the clip below), Abrams revealed that the collaboration began after he saw Hamilton, Miranda’s acclaimed musical about the life of founding father Alexander Hamilton. Backstage, Miranda — himself a huge Star Wars fan — joked to Abrams, “Hey, if you need music for the cantina, I’ll write it.” Little did he know, said Abrams, that The Force Awakens has “a scene that’s sort of our version of the cantina scene,” and composer John Williams (who wrote the new film’s score and the original cantina music) told the director that he’d “rather not write the music for that scene.” So Abrams emailed Miranda to ask if he’d really be interested, to which the Broadway composer replied, “I’ll drop everything!”
The director and Miranda then spent two months collaborating on the music, emailing each other song files and creating a new sound for the new cantina. So what is the new cantina? It’s almost definitely the “watering hole” owned by ex-pirate Maz Kanata (Lupita Nyong’o), which Abrams described to EW as “another bar you’d find in a corner of the Star Wars universe.”
For further evidence of Miranda’s devotion to Star Wars, check out his Darth Vader-themed freestyle rap from another recent episode of The Tonight Show, which Abrams called “maybe the best television I’ve seen in the last ten years.” Watch it below:
Star Wars: The Force Awakens opens in theaters on December 18. For Yahoo Movies’ complete coverage, go here.
