A few weeks ago, we shared with you our take on Christopher Tin’s debut solo album, Calling All Dawns. The album opens a new recording of the piece “Baba Yetu,” which was the opening theme for Sid Meier’s Civilization IV. The new recording featured the Soweto Gospel Choir.
More recently, the hit song had a music video created, which debuted at Carnegie Hall during a panel discussion on the future of games and music.
Brooke Hanson directed this video, which uses footage from the Civilization series (mostly Civilization IV) to recount human history (though, during the second half of the video, it is decidedly American history that’s used in the video).
Though it’s nice to see the song juxtaposed against Sid Meier’s games, I did feel it was a little inappropriate playing the major-key portion of this ultra-uplifting Swahili version of The Lord’s Prayer during scenes of war. There were some parts of the song where showing conflict would be justified, but that early stuff near the one minute mark just didn’t seem right to me.
What I do like about this video is the lovely transition at the end from space exploration back to primitive times. It really pushes the “cycle” theme, which the Calling All Dawns album pushed equally hard. What can I say? I’m into it!
Be sure to share your thoughts with us on this music video. What could they have done to make it better? Would you like to see some more “official music videos” for game music themes?
Tags: Baba Yetu, Calling All Dawns, Carnegie Hall, Christopher Tin, Civilization IV, Music Videos, Sid Meier, Soweto Gospel Choir, YouTube
