It’s May 12, 2009. A ‘Poetry Jam’ is hosted at the White House, one of those artsy affairs that everyone in attendance remembers, but never makes news.

One of the performers is a 29-year-old son of Puerto Rican immigrants. The first musical he wrote, In the Heights, a somewhat biographical portrait of growing up in New York City’s Washington Heights neighborhood, garnered the Tony Award for Best Musical the year before, with the beats and rhymes of hip-hop a central component.

Now, though, the topic was quite different. The young, energetic and excitable performer introduced the first piece of a hip-hop project he was working on about….Alexander Hamilton, a man dead for 205 years best known for having his face on a currency and for getting killed in a duel.

Many in the room, President Barack Obama included, laughed.  But then Alex Lacamoire struck up his piano, and over the next four minutes Lin-Manuel Miranda laid out the early life story of the nation’s first treasury secretary, told from the point of view of the man who shot him, Aaron Burr. The rhymes, rhythm and words were fun, funky and irresistible, and when it was done, he got a standing ovation.

Still, who knew?

Six-plus years later, the finished project made it to Broadway, and its opening number was the same as when Miranda performed it in the White House. Only now it was followed by two-plus hours full of amazing songs and raps, blowing away all who bore witness to it – or listened to it later.

Simply put, Hamilton is like nothing the stage has seen before, a life-changing experience for those fortunate enough to get tickets to the Richard Rodgers Theater, and just as special to everyone who has not seen the show live but owns the two-CD cast recording.

The impact of Hamilton is as deep as any work of art in my lifetime. What other piece has ever altered the currency of this country, with a successful push to keep Hamilton on the $10 bill?  What other political story is something Joe Biden and Dick Cheney could agree on?

More importantly, think of the millions of young people for whom American history is a boring, dry topic about old, dead (mostly) white people. Now, because of Hamilton, they’re enthusiastic and want to learn more about the country’s past. Teachers have integrated the show into their curriculum. This is nothing but good.

How to explain this phenomenon? It starts with the music, of course.

A fair warning to anyone who listens to the cast recording – once heard, it will never escape your brain. It covers a dizzying range of genres, for while hip-hop is the featured element, R&B, rock, soul, reggae and a dozen other sounds show up. Somehow, they all fit together, and sound just right.

Unconventional as it may sound, there’s echoes of Broadway past, from the litany of words (think Music Man) to the brotherhood forged through conflict (think Les Miserables) to having the antagonist tell the story of the protagonist (think Evita).

But what gets the most attention is that events of more than two centuries ago are re-imagined for a 2016 audience, and done by a multiracial cast.

Thus, the Schuyler sisters enter with a Destiny’s Child motif. George III is pompous British pop-rock. The esoteric cabinet squabbles between Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson are turned into raucous rap battles, complete with insults and dropped mikes.

Miranda used, as his source material, Ron Chernow’s remarkable biography of Hamilton, which portrays him as the ultimate self-made immigrant success story, Chernow laid out how Hamilton established America’s financial system while running into conflict with every other founding father. Even George Washington was mad at him for a time.

When it came to the musical, Miranda would use Burr as the narrator, first friendly with Hamilton, then envious about the latter’s rise to power, then wanting to do anything to get into the “Room Where It Happens”, ultimately gaining the vice presidency, though even that couldn’t keep him from exacting his revenge on Hamilton.

By portraying these major historic figures as flawed human beings, Miranda sets up the heartache of the second act, and it hits hard. Having reveled so much at Hamilton’s ascendance in the first act, we ache at the end for all that he loses. This is no perfect hero, with redemption gained only after Burr’s bullet enters Hamilton’s body.

Aside from all the other cool parts, Miranda has engaged his audience, from the blocks of tickets for high school students (fittingly at $10 a pop) to the daily Ham4Ham performance outside the theater where people who show up can take part in a daily lottery for tickets. Those that don’t get in still get a number from a Broadway performer and have a lot of fun.

Things got more serious, though, on June 12, when this year’s Tony Awards were handed out. It took place hours after the Orlando shooting massacre and, as expected, Hamilton carted away 11 statuettes, but that wasn’t the memorable part.

Just as he did seven years earlier at the White House, Lin-Manuel Miranda, accepting the award for Best Score, was on a stage, rhyming. Only it was a tearful sonnet dedicated to his wife and the victims in Orlando, reminding us that nothing in life is given to us, not one day, and that love is love and could never be killed. At that moment, we needed to hear that message.

This week, our nation turned 240 years old. Though we don’t have control over who lives, or who dies, or who tells our stories, we should be thankful that Miranda,  a particularly gifted storyteller, gave us  Hamilton, merging past with present and making us look at ourselves, and our history, in a different, profound and refreshing way.