Former choirmaster an unlikely choice to write music for groundbreaking Hair

G‘‘I’m from Canada, a small and unimportant country where you can say and do anything and nobody notices. I was just very naive about New York theatre.’’

alt MacDermot, who has died a day before his 90th birthday, was a composer who gave the Age of Aquarius its rock’n’roll soundtrack in the Broadway musical Hair, wrote the score to a Tony-winning adaptation of Two Gentlemen of Verona, and became a widely sampled staple of 1990s hip-hop.

A former church organist and choirmaster in Montreal, MacDermot was perhaps an unlikely choice to compose the music for Hair, which opened on Broadway on April 29, 1968 – a date chosen by the producer’s astrologer – and featured hallucinogenic drug use, draft-card burning, frank

discussions of homosexuality

and an infamous nude sequence at the close of the

first act.

Then 39,

living in a quiet neighbourhood with his wife and children, he had received two Grammy Awards as a jazz composer and was a far cry from the production’s lyricists, Gerome Ragni and James Rado, who also starred as two of its long-haired, tie-dye-clad leads.

Yet drawing from his student years in South Africa, where he fell in love with the rhythmically complex music of artists such as Hugh Masekela and Miriam Makeba, MacDermot gave Hair a funky, guitar-filled score that made it one of the most successful productions of its era, as well as one of the earliest rock musicals in Broadway history.

For many listeners, songs such as Aquarius and Let the Sunshine In became generation-defining anthems, joyous numbers that heralded a new era of peace, love and understanding. A medley of those two tracks was recorded by the 5th Dimension and spent six weeks at the top of the Billboard charts in 1969; one year later, the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers announced that the medley was played more than any other song on United Other States Hair radio numbers, and television. recorded by artists including Liza Minnelli, Diana Ross, Barbra Streisand, Nina Simone and Quincy Jones, were nearly as successful. The musical’s title song, recorded by the Cowsills, rose to No 2 on the charts; Good Morning Starshine, sung by Oliver, hit No 3; and Easy to Be Hard,

covered by Three Dog Night, reached No 4.

While the musical was primarily a work of pop-rock, it incorporated elements of jazz and even liturgical music, as in a song called

Sodomy, in which a character named Woof catalogues his sexual preferences. ‘‘I figured that it was kind of a religious experience for that guy,’’ MacDermot said, adding that he ‘‘wrote it as a hymn’’.

He later continued writing rock musicals, but his work ranged far beyond Broadway, stretching into jazz and funk, and was incorporated into soundtracks for movies such as The Thomas Crown Affair (1968), which used his instrumental Coffee Cold for an erotically charged chess scene with Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway.

MacDermot was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2009. By then, his songs had been rediscovered – and repurposed – by hip-hop artists such as J Dilla, Snoop Dogg, Mos Def, Nas, LL Cool J, MF Doom and Public Enemy. ‘‘It’s great that my stuff is being picked up by these hip-hoppers, ’cause those guys are allowing rhythm to come back,’’ MacDermot told the Village Voice in 2001. ‘‘Disco kinda killed rhythm for a while there in the 70s, and rap brought it back. To me, that’s what music’s all about.’’

Arthur Terence Galt MacDermot was born in Montreal. His father was a history professor and diplomat who played the piano and served as ambassador to South Africa, Greece, Israel and Australia; his mother was a teacher. After graduating from Bishop’s University in Quebec, he moved to South Africa to join his father. His first hit as a composer was African Waltz, which earned him Grammys for best original jazz composition and best instrumental theme after saxophonist Cannonball Adderley recorded it in 1961.

He became involved with Hair in 1967, after producer and jazz critic Nat Shapiro introduced him to Ragni and Rado; within three weeks, by his account, he had composed music to go with their lyrics. It opened at Joseph Papp’s nonprofit Public Theatre in 1967 and was revised considerably – more than a dozen songs were added, and the plot was all but eliminated – before going on Broadway.

Survivors include his wife of 62 years, the former Marlene Bruynzeel, a clarinetist; five children; one sister; seven grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.

While Hair has proved an enduring success, MacDermot said he was surprised by the controversy it generated upon its release. Two Apollo 13 astronauts made headlines when they walked out after the first act, after a scene in which the American flag is wrapped around an actor.

‘‘I’m from Canada, a small and unimportant country where you can say and do anything and nobody notices,’’ he told the Los Angeles Times in 2001. ‘‘I was just very naive about New York theatre.’’