\'In the Heights\' Composer Began Career Working on Political Ads

Lin-Manuel Miranda has had a busy few years since his musical “In the Heights,” a hip-hop-infused celebration of the grit and dreams of Latino immigrants in Washington Heights, became a hit on Broadway and won a shelf full of .

He has rapped for President Obama at the White House. He has bantered with Big Bird on “Sesame Street.” He got married, and more than 2.5 million people watched a YouTube video of him, his father-in-law and the bridal party singing and dancing to the song “To Life” from “Fiddler on the Roof.” Now, at 32, he has his third credit on Broadway, as one of the creators of “Bring It On: The Musical,” about cheerleading competitions.

But as the composer's fame spreads, one piece of Mr. Miranda's past has been little noted: In his 20s, while he was writing and revising “In the Heights,” he supported himself in part by composing music for advertisements for local political candidates.

Thanks to his father, Luis A. Miranda Jr., a New York political consultant who has been a close adviser to Fernando Ferrer, the former Bronx borough president and mayoral candidate, and State Senator Adriano Espaillat, the younger Mr. Miranda's jingles found their way into English- and Spanish-language advertisements for politicians including not only Mr. Ferrer but also H. Carl McCall, the former state comptroller, and Eliot Spitzer, the former governor. All those politicians are Democrats.

“He'd say, ‘I have a Sharpton radio ad - I need 60 seconds of smooth jazz,' ” Lin-Manuel Miranda recalled the other day.

For the elder Mr. Miranda, hiring his son provided a dual benefit: His son charged less than other composers, and needed work.

Luis Miranda said he had encouraged his son - fruitlessly - to go to law school, noting that the salsa singer Rubén Blades had a law degree. But when it became clear that the younger Mr. Miranda was determined to focus on “In the Heights,” his father wanted to be able to help him.

“The work with me allowed him to sort of dedicate his life to art,” Luis Miranda said.

The younger Mr. Miranda said he did not consider his political jingles his most inspired work. He agreed with his father that music played a more important role in Spanish-language political campaigns than in English ones. But he said the parameters of the job were fairly limited.

The music is “generally accompanied by footage of the candidates shaking hands, doing very task-oriented things, so it's got to have a pulse, and it's got to be generally hopeful,” Mr. Miranda said.

A more complex advertisement might start out with something negative about the opposing candidate, requiring 10 seconds of downbeat music - “Sad strings: ‘Under bad candidate, this happened,' ” he suggested - before a transition to a more upbeat, aspirational melody.

“It's a little like movie scoring,” Mr. Miranda said. “If you've got a scary scene, you've got to write music for the scary scene.”

On only one occasion did he get to deploy his talent for writing hip-hop lyrics, when his father asked him to ghostwrite a robocall that the rapper Fat Joe was expected to make for Mr. Ferrer's 2005 mayoral campaign.

“I remember the hook was ‘Freddy ready' - that's about all I remember from it,” Lin-Manuel Miranda said. “I don't think it ever got used.”

He said he did not meet or know much about many of the candidates he wrote music for. An exception was David S. Yassky, whose 2009 campaign for the Democratic nomination for city comptroller he wrote a jingle for, even though “In the Heights” was already on Broadway and he no longer needed the money.

The younger Mr. Miranda said he had met Mr. Yassky and liked him, so was happy to do it.

About the ad, Mr. Yassky said, “I kind of tried to angle for an opportunity to sing in it, but I was politely declined.” (Mr. Yassky ultimately lost in a runoff to John C. Liu. He is now the city's taxi and limousine commissioner.)

These days, the younger Mr. Miranda is juggling several projects: writing songs for “Sesame Street”; working on a television pilot with his hip-hop group, Freestyle Love Supreme; and revising a hip-hop song cycle about Alexander Hamilton.

Now, when he gets involved in politics, it is not for money but out of conviction. In January, for instance, he hosted an Obama fund-raiser at the Apollo Theater, where the president sang a couple of bars of Al Green's “Let's Stay Together” to the electrified audience.

Locally, he is raising money for a childhood friend, Mayra Linares, who is running for the seat in the Assembly currently occupied by her father, Guillermo Linares. (In the byzantine and rivalrous world of uptown politics, Guillermo Linares, a close friend of Luis Miranda, is mounting a primary challenge against Mr. Espaillat, the elder Mr. Miranda's longtime client.)

Lin-Manuel Miranda said he had known Ms. Linares since childhood, when they accompanied their fathers to political events.

“She's like the Nina to my Usnavi,” he said, referring to two “In the Heights” characters. “She's the girl who stayed in the neighborhood and made good.”

He said he wasn't sure whether Ms. Linares would have any television advertisements, but he said they had talked about her blasting some “In the Heights” music from the trucks that political candidates in Washington Heights usually have driven around the neighborhood to advertise their campaigns.

“If she ever needed music for radio ads or spots, I'd of course be happy to do that,” he said.

Luis Miranda said he was not sorry that his son was now too busy to write background music for political ads.

“I thought I was going to have to give work to Lin-Manuel for the rest of my life,” Luis Miranda said, chuckling.

“Now he actually can support me after I retire.”