Civilization IV Baba Yetu Gets Grammy Award

The American composer, Christopher Tin, has managed to win a Grammy Award, one of the leading distinctions in the world of music, for Baba Yetu, the song which opened the Civilization IV turn-based strategy game from developer Firaxis and publisher 2K Games.

The award Tin managed to get is named Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying Vocalists and was handed out at the 53rd Grammy Awards that has been held in Los Angeles.

Tin did not stop there and managed to also take home the Grammy Award for Best Classical Crossover Album for his first studio album, named “Calling All Dawns,” which includes Baba Yetu and delivers the same impressive world music with clear classic influences.

The official version for the birth of “Baba Yetu” is that Soren Johnson, who was then the lead designer working on Civilization IV under the supervision of Sid Meier, was sharing a room with Christopher Tin and asked him to create the leading song for a game which asks the player to control one civilization from the beginning of its history to the space age.

One of the main hooks of “Baba Yetu” is the choral section, performed by the singers from the Stanford Talisman acappella group, with the lyrics being a Swahili version of a Christian prayer called “Our Father”.

The song has been winning awards as soon as 2007 and has been regularly played by Video Games Live, the initiative which aims to perform live version of well-known video game songs.

A video-game-based track winning the prestigious Grammy could mean another round in the debate that asks whether video game can be art.

Civilization IV has been one of the most successful turn-based strategy titles in history and has spawned a very successful modding scene, which delivered gems like Dune Wars or Fall from Heaven.