Annnnd We Have A Winner!

Score one for the boys back home!

Last night's Grammy Awards, while predictably full of faces like Bieber and Gaga, managed to finally do something interesting and a tad unpredictable. Happily, this means Christopher Tin's beautiful "Baba Yetu", nominated for a Grammy and theme song to 2005's Civilization IV, actually ended up winning!

The song, which you can hear below, won in the "Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying Vocalists", although I would say that this recognition came about 5 (or 6!) years too late. Why the delay? Well, the men and women of the Academy do not pay attention to video game music, but they do pay attention when a composer places a song like this at the beginning of a new album. Christopher Tin did so with his debut album, Calling all Dreams, which also ended up winning a Grammy for "Best Classical Crossover Album".

What I don't get is that the Grammy Awards consist of 109 categories...and cover music across an incredibly broad spectrum, and yet these awards do not incorporate video game music. If a theme song for a video game is good enough to win a Grammy, then why couldn't video game music be the 110th category? Someone needs to make it happen!

Anyway, this is still a moment that we gamers have to be proud of. Mainstream recognition could be a good or bad thing, though that is a topic for another day. For now, let's just be happy that our entertainment medium of choice is capable of producing such award-winning quality.

EDIT: I just got through listening to Tin's Calling all Dawns album over at his website, and all I have to say is "Wow". It's no wonder this album itself also won a Grammy; this guy is incredibly talented, and the songs presented here are absolute gems, all presented in a variety of languages fine-tuned to sound their most beautiful. Everything from Swahili (With Baba Yetu of course) to Japanese, Latin, and Celtic Irish. I think I'm going to be buying this album!