For the first time in history, a Grammy Award has been given to a video game song.
Dang. It's about time, people.
The song — "Baba Yetu" — is the theme song for the game "Civilization IV" and, at Sunday night's 2011 Grammy Awards ceremony, it took home the award for "Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying Vocalists."
The song was written by Christopher Tin and features the Soweto Gospel Choir and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Though it first appeared in famed strategy game "Civ 4," which launched back in 2005, it was included on Tin's album "Calling All Dawns," which was released during this year's Grammy window.
"Calling All Dawns" also won the award for "Best Classical Crossover Album." Not bad seeing how it was Tin's first album.
According to Tin's website, "Baba Yetu" has seen close to 1,000 live concert performances both from local and professional choirs, and as part of the Video Games Live concert tour.
"I hope this brings more awareness to the fact that great music is being written for video games out there, and hopefully other game composers will follow me up here on the stage sometime," Tin said during his acceptance speech Sunday.
Here's hoping Tin is right. There is some superb music being made for video games and it would be nice to see that properly recognized.
You can check out Tin's complete acceptance speech here (he gives props to his dad who lent him the money to make his album). And here's the official "Baba Yetu" music video for you:
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Winda Benedetti writes about games for msnbc.com. You can follow her tweets about games and other things right here on Twitter.