Music break: Baba Yetu

“Baba Yetu” is part of the modern canon.  But it was originally composed as the theme music for a video game, and no I am not kidding.



Did any of you play Civ IV?  It ate hundreds of hours of my life, back when.  It got a bit grindy in the late game, but otherwise it was pretty amazing.  Remember Leonard Nimoy doing all the technology quotes?  Did you ever manage to win a cultural victory?

Anyway.  Back in the early 2000s, one of the game designers had been college roommates with a guy who was taking a major in music composition.  And a few years after graduation, the former roommate was now an up-and-coming young composer. So the game designer reached out and asked the ex-roomie if he could compose a theme for their new video game.  He agreed, and the result was “Baba Yetu”.

The composer — Christopher Tin — went on to have a celebrated career.  He’s won a bunch of awards, including a couple of Grammys.  He’s still active.  A native Californian, he’s the son of immigrants from Hong Kong.  He’s done the theme music for every version of Civilization since IV (they’re up to VII now) — presumably out of sentiment, since he pretty clearly doesn’t need the work.

Meanwhile “Baba Yetu”, as I said, has become part the canon.  It’s been repeatedly covered and is regularly performed worldwide, by everyone from the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra to the US Navy Band.

With regard to this particular performance, the choir is South African, and it reminded me of a conversation I had a few years back.  I was somewhere in Africa — I’m going to say Uganda?  — doing USAID stuff.   And an African colleague and I were discussing an upcoming event.  And he casually mentioned that “there’ll be a mix of whites, and  South Africans, and blacks”.

“You mean white South Africans?”

“Yes, white South Africans.”

“But you said whites and South Africans, like they’re different things.”

“Well, I suppose they are different things.”

“White South Africans aren’t white?”

“Of course they’re white. They’re just African white.”

Anyway. South Africa has a complicated history that’s beyond the scope of this brief blog post.  And “diverse” is an idea that’s under siege right now.  But if seeing a bunch of young people of different races joyfully working together to make something beautiful doesn’t lift your heart just a little, then I don’t know what else to add.

And that’s all.