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Some say that among the most conspicuous of endangered species is the original musical — the very thing that defines, in many minds, Broadway. We may be years removed from the prolific heydays of Rodgers and his Hart and Hammerstein, Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, Cole Porter, the Gershwins and other legendary practitioners of that art. But this year, original — meaning new, non-revival — musicals have come back with a vengeance, dwarfing musical revivals almost six to one. Eleven brand-new musicals took their Broadway bows during 2010-2011, with only How To Succeed in Business Without Trying and Anything Goes duking it out for Best Revival honors.

So, let's strike up the band and review these musical newbies that just paraded by!

Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, Broadway's first emo-rock musical, was the result of an off-hand remark made by Sh-K-Boom Records exec Kurt Deutsch, who, knowing writer-director Alex Timbers was into both emo music and historical figures, said to him: "Isn't Andrew Jackson the ultimate emo-President?" Right then and there, Timbers thought it a fantastic idea and, with songs by Michael Friedman, brought it to fruition and Broadway six years later. "The thing that I think is coolest about this show," he said, "is that Andrew Jackson unwittingly has grown to reflect and refract all the political leaders that we elect so this play, in some ways, is like Obama in Year Two and how difficult it is to govern. It also feels like Sarah Palin and the Tea Party. It just been amazing that Jackson is this sort of great fun-house mirror for us but also draws out these different political leaders that we love. He was a very complicated guy, just as it's complicated to be an American. We are the product of Andrew Jackson. I think that's what makes the show interesting. It's not a straight hierography, but it's also not a takedown. I have very complicated feelings about Andrew Jackson." Evidently.

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Audacious to the end, Fred Ebb and John Kander served up a social-history horror story in the improbable and controversial form of a socially incorrect minstrel show for their 13th and final Broadway musical. The Scottsboro Boys, which was largely completed just a few days before Ebb's death, tells the true and cruel story of nine African-American teens who were railroaded into jail for rapes that never happened in Alabama of 1931. Hardly a suitable case for musical-comedy treatment, you say? Then, look at the Nazis of Cabaret and the "little" murderers of Chicago — Kander & Ebb triumphs, both! The team's latter-day book-writer, David Thompson, said their desire was "to tell a real American story, a true one," and, to that end, they researched the great trials of the last century, inevitably stumbling across the infamous Scottsboro incident. "John Kander's music is part of his soul," said Thompson. "If he needs music to sound like a ragtime step, it pours out of his fingers. If he needs it to sound like a lovely ballad, he can reach down into that well and pull up that water. He's an artist that way. Most of the score that exists right now was in place when Fred Ebb died. As the musical continues and characters were defined, there were lyrics that had to be finished or adapted or continued, and that's when John stepped in." It was a fitting fini.