Galt MacDermot

Arthur Terence Galt MacDermot was born on December 18, 1928, in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, the son of Canadian diplomat Terence MacDermot and Elizabeth Savage. He was educated at Upper Canada College and Bishop's University in Sherbrooke, Quebec, before earning a bachelor's degree in music from Cape Town University in South Africa, where he specialized in African music. He studied piano privately with Neil Chotem. During his years in Cape Town, he met Marlene Bruynzeel, a clarinetist of Dutch descent, whom he married in 1956. The couple had five children: Vincent, Molly, Yolanda, and twins Sarah and Jolanthe, who died one day apart in 2020.

MacDermot's early career brought him international recognition when Cannonball Adderley recorded his composition "African Waltz" in 1960, earning MacDermot a Grammy Award the following year. He relocated to New York City in 1964, and three years later composed the music for Hair, the landmark musical that would define his legacy. Hair generated three number-one singles in 1969: "Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In," "Good Morning Starshine," and the title song "Hair." Its Broadway cast album also won a Grammy Award that year. MacDermot later adapted the show for the 1979 film of the same name.

His Broadway credits as composer include Hair, Two Gentlemen of Verona, Dude, Via Galactica, and The Human Comedy. Two Gentlemen of Verona, which opened in 1971, won the Tony Award for Best Musical; MacDermot received a Tony nomination for best music for that production and won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Music in 1972. He had previously received the Vernon Rice–Drama Desk Award in 1968. His later Broadway productions fared poorly with audiences: Dude ran 16 performances, Via Galactica ran 7, and The Human Comedy ran 13.

Beyond Broadway, MacDermot composed film soundtracks, among them Cotton Comes to Harlem (1970), a blaxploitation film starring Godfrey Cambridge, Raymond St. Jacques, and Redd Foxx, based on Chester Himes's novel; Rhinoceros (1974), starring Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder and directed by Tom O'Horgan, who had also directed Hair on Broadway; and Mistress (1992). He wrote his own orchestrations and arrangements for both his theater and film scores. His compositional output extended further to jazz and funk albums, ballet scores, chamber music, orchestral music, the Anglican liturgy, opera, and incidental music for plays.

In 1979, MacDermot founded the New Pulse Jazz Band, one of the first jazz bands to incorporate synthesizer, which performed and recorded his original compositions. The band appeared as part of the onstage ensemble during the 2009 Broadway revival of Hair. That same year, MacDermot was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. On November 22, 2010, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from SOCAN at its annual awards ceremony in Toronto.

MacDermot's music became a significant source for hip-hop producers and artists. Busta Rhymes sampled "Space" from his 1969 record Woman Is Sweeter for "Woo-Hah!! Got You All in Check," and Run DMC sampled the Hair song "Where Do I Go?" in its Grammy Award-winning "Down with the King." Rapper MF DOOM drew on three tracks from Woman Is Sweeter for his Special Herbs series, and in 2006 rapper and producer Oh No released Exodus into Unheard Rhythms, an album constructed entirely from MacDermot samples. Scottish electronica duo Boards of Canada sampled MacDermot's song "Aquarius" from the 1979 Hair film soundtrack for their own track of the same name.

MacDermot died at his home in Staten Island, New York, on December 17, 2018, one day before his 90th birthday.