Christopher Tin grew up in Southern California primarily focused on classical music, but

eventually became greatly influenced by jazz, musical theatre, and the 90s era in San Francisco.

He went to Stanford and Oxford and graduated with honors with a Bachelors in Music and

English. He graduated again with a Masters in Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities. After

that, he received a Masters of Music with distinction from the Royal College of Music in

London. He graduated from this school at the top of his class and he won the Joseph Horovitz

Composition Prize. Christopher Tin is a two-time Grammy winning composer of concert and

media music, he’s won #1 on billboard for a classical album, and he’s received over 20 million

views on Youtube (“About”, n.d.).

Baba Yetu translated from Swahili means “Our Father”. Baba Yetu was composed by

Christopher Tin for his album “Calling All Dawns, but was originally used in Firaxis’ brilliant

2005 strategy game Civilization IV.” (Senior, 2011) When listening to this song, the audience

can definitely hear the African influence from the choir’s voices to the sound of the words in the

song and how they are put together in a specific way. You can also hear the percussion

instruments playing to create an even more epic sound. This piece is very upbeat and it has 92

beats per minute.

I personally like this piece because I find it to be sort of dramatic. Well, given it is the

theme song for a video game, but I find this song to be interesting. The way the choir’s parts are

split up, but how they eventually come together at some parts is a little intriguing. The really

crazy fact about Baba Yetu is that although it’s split up into about 6 parts, those 6 parts are never

really singing together at the same time. They mainly just come in during certain parts of the

song. My favorite part of the song is the “doo, doo, doo’s”. If you don’t understand this now, you
will when you hear this piece. I think the audience would really like this song because it has a

nice beat and the voices come together really well.

 Works Cited

About. (n.d.). Retrieved February 26, 2018, from http://www.christophertin.com/about.html

Baba Yetu. (2018, February 17). Retrieved February 26, 2018, from https://en.wikipedia

.org/wiki/Baba_Yetu

K. (2013, December 4). Music of Non-Western Cultures. Retrieved February 26, 2018, from

http://worldmusic.umwblogs.org/2013/12/04/baba-yetu/

Senior, T. (2011, February 14). Civilization 4 wins grammy for Baba Yetu six years after release.

Retrieved February 26, 2018, from https://www.pcgamer.com/civilization-4-wins-

grammy -award/