On Wednesday, March 5, Augustana welcomed back musician Joe Goodkin as he hit Gävle 3 with selections of his 17-song adaptation of Homer’s epic poem, “Iliad.” Smooth guitar combined with the bittersweet lyrics of the tragedy of war and battle made for a moving performance, keeping the audience on the edge of their seats throughout each piece.
Sophomore Monica Mawi, one of the spectators at the night’s performance, said she enjoyed the experience of hearing a classic like the “Iliad” in a new format.
“It was just really interesting to see all these connections between modern-day and ancient times on warfare and how it impacts people,” Mawi said. “I could really feel the turmoil and emotion that the songs held, and it really got me engaged with these characters.”
As a traveling musician who’s performed in all 50 states and several countries abroad, Goodkin’s music was a spectacle to remember for the rhyme of the songs and the story behind them. Inspired by characters of the “Iliad,” Goodkin’s music aimed to capture the horror, grief and love that make up the infamous tale.
To do this, Goodkin tied the performance to the combat experience of today’s veterans.
“I was part of a charity called Guitars for Veterans, where I taught guitar lessons at VA Hospitals in Chicago as part of PTSD recreational therapy,” Goodkin said. “It really was a critical part of me writing these songs because it gave me vocabulary around the warrior experience, and it helped me, as a songwriter, get comfortable speaking for a group of people that I don’t have a ton of first-hand knowledge about.”
Much like the ancient warriors of the “Iliad,” modern-day soldiers often have torn feelings about their times of duty. Goodkin said that a large part of his work on these songs was learning more about veterans’ complex relationships with their combat experiences.
“The first thing is, you can’t just generalize it,” Goodkin said. “You can’t just say, you know, you’re a veteran. This is what you went through. It’s everything under the sun. It depends on your interaction with the military, it depends on whether you saw combat and ties all these other things [together]. For some of them, their service was important positively, some it was important negatively and some it was a mixture.”
By comparing the hardships of “Iliad” characters, such as Hector, Agamemnon and Achilles, to the real stories of veterans, Goodkin drew real-life, flesh-and-blood parallels to the epic for the audience to enjoy and reflect on.
The night’s performance was made possible by the classics department, who invited Joe Goodkin to the Augustana stage for the first time in the fall of 2015.
Kirsten Day, chair of the classics department, said this was a golden opportunity for students to learn more about the relationship between modern-day combat trauma and classical Greek mythology. Goodkin’s way of performing resonates with the traditions of old, given how the “Iliad” was passed down verbally for centuries.
“It’s so an antiquity, given that these epics were originally sung,” Day said. “The tales of this epic war were passed on and on for over 500 years before they were finally written down. And that’s what [Goodkin’s] doing, right? He’s going from place to place and singing about these ancient stories. It’s really in the epic tradition, and I think bringing this opportunity to campus is a real treat.”
