How Civilization 4’s Christopher Tin became the first game composer to win a Grammy

polygon.com:

Civilization 4 is an epic of a game. The strategy game puts you in charge of a settlement and tasks you with expansion: Do you conquer everyone else? Control most of the land? Head to the stars? Become a world leader? A game with such lofty goals needs to begin strong. And for Civ 4, that meant starting with a musical epic: “Baba Yetu,” the game’s legendary title song created by freelance composer Christopher Tin.

Originally released in 2005 alongside the game, “Baba Yetu” has gone on to earn acclaim well beyond the video game industry, and will forever hold a place in its history. In 2009, Tin put the song on his classical album, Calling All Dawns. That inclusion made “Baba Yetu,” which Time Magazine called a “rousing, anthemic theme song,” eligible for a nomination at the 53rd Annual Grammy Awards; on Feb. 13, 2011, it won, making “Baba Yetu” the first piece of music composed for a video game to win a Grammy. (It won “Best Instrumental Arrangement With Vocalist(s).”)

To this day, it’s still a major part of Tin’s life. In May, Tin and the Washington National Opera hosted the “Christopher Tin Sing-In” with the Washington Metropolitan Gamer Symphony Orchestra — an event that invited singers (and gamers) to sing along to Tin’s Civilization compositions. (Tin returned to the Civilization franchise with “Sogno di Volare” for Civilization 6, and he’s had a successful career as a composer in video games, movies, and elsewhere. You can hear his work in PGA 2K21, Splitgate, Civilization Online, andKarateka, among others.)

Tin recently told Polygon he was initially expecting around 150 people to register for the Civilization event. More than 1,200 ended up registering. “The event was a huge success, and we were able to introduce a lot of gamers to the opera world — and likewise, a lot of people in the opera community got their first taste of video game music as well,” he said.

In an email interview with Polygon, Tin discussed the creation of “Baba Yetu” for Civilization 4