Hair (musical) - Music

Music

After studying the music of the Bantu at Cape Town University, McDermot incorporated African rhythms into the score of Hair. He listened to "what called quaylas... very characteristic beat, very similar to rock. Much deeper though.... Hair is very African – a lot of rhythms, not the tunes so much." Quaylas stress beats on unexpected syllables, and this influence can be heard in songs like "What a Piece of Work Is Man" and "Ain't Got No Grass". MacDermot said, "My idea was to make a total funk show. They said they wanted rock & roll – but to me that translated to 'funk.'" That funk is evident throughout the score, notably in songs like "Colored Spade" and "Walking in Space".

MacDermot has claimed that the songs "can't all be the same. You've got to get different styles.... I like to think they're all a little different." As such, the music in Hair runs the gamut of rock: from the rockabilly sensibilities of "Don't Put it Down" to the folk rock rhythms of "Frank Mills" and "What a Piece of Work is Man". "Easy to be Hard" is pure rhythm and blues, and protest rock anthems abound: "Ain't Got No" and "The Flesh Failures". The acid rock of "Walking in Space" and "Aquarius" are balanced by the mainstream pop of "Good Morning Starshine". Scott Miller ties the music of Hair to the hippies' political themes: "The hippies... were determined to create art of the people and their chosen art form, rock/folk music was by its definition, populist. ...he hippies' music was often very angry, its anger directed at those who would prostitute the Constitution, who would sell America out, who would betray what America stood for; in other words, directed at their parents and the government." Theatre historian John Kenrick explains the application of rock music to the medium of the stage:

The same hard rock sound that had conquered the world of popular music made its way to the musical stage with two simultaneous hits – Your Own Thing Hair.... This explosion of revolutionary proclamations, profanity and hard rock shook the musical theatre to its roots.... Most people in the theatre business were unwilling to look on Hair as anything more than a noisy accident. Tony voters tried to ignore Hair's importance, shutting it out from any honors. However, some now insisted it was time for a change. New York Times critic Clive Barnes gushed that Hair was "the first Broadway musical in some time to have the authentic voice of today rather than the day before yesterday."

The music did not resonate with everyone. Leonard Bernstein remarked "the songs are just laundry lists" and walked out of the production. Richard Rodgers could only hear the beat and called it "one-third music". John Fogerty said, "Hair is such a watered down version of what is really going on that I can’t get behind it at all." Gene Lees, writing for High Fidelity, claimed that John Lennon found it "dull", and he wrote, "I do not know any musician who thinks it's good."