The Blues of Achilles

In our first colloquium of the 2024-25 academic year, DS hosted Joe Goodkin, a Chicago-based singer/songwriter with a BA in Classics from UW-Madison. Goodkin performed The Blues of Achilles, a set of 17 original songs guitar and vocals. It tells the story of the Iliad through the eyes of the characters: Achilles, Patroklus, Briseis, Helen, Priam, and more. The performance evokes the original oral tradition of epic bards that stretches back millennia and frames the poem in an accessible way (both musically and narratively) for modern audiences.