Malukah and Peter Hollens have released a version Civilization IV‘s Baba Yetu created almost entirely with vocals.
Civilization is a franchise that countless gamers cherish for a variety of reasons. Many love the depth of gameplay it provides. Others value its challenging experience of leading a society throughout the ages of human development. Some meanwhile, as with most great games, fall in love with its music. On the whole, the Civilization titles have produced a ton of songs that fans have come to love almost as much as the games themselves.
The arguable cream of that particular crop is Baba Yetu, the Grammy winning theme song from Civilization IV. A wonderfully appropriate and atmospheric song it’s been a mainstay of the Video Games Live concert series for years and, most recently, was the subject a cover version recorded by musicians Peter Hollens and Malukah. Their take on the song lasts a little over four minutes and is somewhat more minimalist than the original version composed by Christopher Tin. Not that this should be taken as a slight against the new cover which skillfully employs multiple vocal tracks and percussion to capture the grandiose scale and feeling of the orchestrated song.
Babu Yetu is, of course, just the latest piece of gaming music to be recreated by Malukah and Hollens. Malukah famously caught the attention of Skyrim fans back in 2011 with her haunting rendition of The Dragonborn Comes and has released numerous other game based music pieces in the years since. Hollens, likewise, has worked on several solo and collaborative pieces based on music from Skyrim, World of Warcraft and Portal.
Source: YouTube
