What started out as a college thesis for Jorge Rivera-Herrans has turned into a musical reimagining of Homer’s Odyssey. The ancient epic explodes onto the scene, fuelled by the power of TikTok.
The timeless tale, written by Homer around 800 BC, is again a craze in today’s world. Rivera-Herrans’s adaptation of the Odyssey has surged in popularity in the digital space via TikTok.
The American composer conceived the musical, EPIC, based on the Odyssey, in June 2019 for his senior thesis at the University of Notre Dame. In the years following, he went about bringing his vision to life.
He used social media, especially TikTok, to document the creative development process, which proved to be a stroke of genius as it gained further traction and engrossed people in following the work’s development.
The first video he uploaded on TikTok was on January 17, 2021, early in the platform’s surge of popularity.
He simply introduced EPIC with a sampling of one of the tracks from the first saga, Full Speed Ahead, and unknowingly started a frenzy which has to date clocked over 60 million views.
The interest in EPIC has strengthened over time as the American released the nine sagas of the musical (containing 40 songs) from December 25, 2022, to December 25, 2024.
EPIC has stood out in fan engagement, with many people going so far as to create fan-made animations to accompany the music and posting them as videos.
The level of transparency between Rivera-Herrans and his audience has contributed to endearing them to the musical.
Like Odysseus (voiced by Rivera-Herrans), complications arose during the composer’s journey of making the musical, which is why it took two years to complete.
Issues such as edits and rewrites of songs, and lawsuit dramas between the American and the recording company, did not derail Rivera-Herrans and his vision.
The musical is, as the title suggests, EPIC. It is featured on numerous audio platforms like Spotify, where some songs have been streamed up to 60 million times.
It is still only a sign of things to come, as the composer revealed shortly after the release of the ninth and final part, The Ithaca Saga, plans to adapt the musical into a series of video games, as well as potentially an animated film and stage production.
Rivera-Herrans will complete the Homeric cycle and announced last month that he’s working on a second musical, Ilium, based on Homer’s other epic, The Iliad.
Rivera-Herrans’ own Odyssey has only just begun. He will no doubt navigate the rocks, try not to be seduced by Circe, as he traverses the digital sea for years to come.
Neos Kosmos approached Jorge Rivera-Herrans for comment but did not hear back.
