No, this isn’t going to turn into a “song of the week” blog post series. But I wanted to mention this particular song along with an accompanying discussion on the role of music in my life.

I should start with the rather obvious fact that I am not a musical person. I was not raised in a musical family. I remember playing the baritone back in elementary school for a year or two, and I quickly backed out as soon as I finished my “music requirements” for school.

As additional evidence of my lack of musical interest, knowledge, and expertise, in my six or seven years of driving, I have never had the music on, ever. I also do not think I have touched an iPod in my life, and I say “think” here because of the possibility that I may have had to accidentally brush one of them when cleaning up after another students’ mess on his/her desk (c’mon, please be tidy!). My use of headphones is restricted to when I show up to talk to my audiologist, who provides me with a headphone to wear as she checks my hearing levels. Does that count?

That’s not to say that people with hearing aids can’t listen to music at all. For instance, I hear music all the time when I watch movies or play games. There are also special earplugs that can work with hearing aids and have hooks to keep them in place.

One can also try to use earbuds “normally.” I know one deaf person who plugs in earbuds directly into his ears. This is only possible, I believe, for those who still have their natural hearing (i.e., without cochlear implants). I could do that because I have some natural hearing remaining. If someone is talking within two inches of my left ear (but not the right), I could probably understand that person. Unfortunately, I am afraid of putting earbuds directly into my ear because I worry that it will damage whatever natural hearing I have.

Recently, I have been trying to listen to more music. In part this is because I don’t want to embarrass myself in front of others when the topic of music comes up, but it’s also because I think I can use music for relaxation or focus. When I work at home, I frequently turn to relaxing nature sounds such as the ones in this YouTube video, but that’s technically not a “real” song.

An example of an actual song that I’ve come to really like over the past few years is Baba Yetu. Here’s a Wikipedia link, and here’s a YouTube link. For those who don’t know, it is the theme music for the popular and award-winning Civilization IV computer game. The composer, Christopher Tin, used to be Stanford roommates with the lead game developer, Soren Johnson, so that’s how the song ended up there. On the surface, this seems like blatant favoritism, but it was a pretty genius move for both sides because Baba Yetu became the first video game song to win a Grammy Award.

I was a huge Civilization IV fan in high school, and I remember a few times when I allowed the opening music to play completely instead of skipping through it and going straight to the gameplay, as is my custom. I am not sure how to quantify the quality of music, but I can agree with many other listeners that Baba Yetu intuitively has some appealing mystical or supernatural quality to it. I liked it enough in high school so that, during my 12th grade Advanced Placement English Class, when the students presented their favorite book, movie, and song to the class to introduce themselves to each other, Baba Yetu was the song that I presented. Incidentally, my book was Outliers, and my movie was The Dark Knight. And yes, that was AP English … as distressing as that sounds.

I would be remiss if I did not conclude this discussion with the news that Christopher Tin will also be composing the opening music for Civilization VI, slated for an October release! It looks like the designers of Civilization VI are learning from the mistakes of Civilization V after all! The gameplay for Civilization VI, and now the music, look to be far more promising than those of the lackluster Civilization V game. (For more on why I believe this in terms of gameplay, read this article by someone who I agree with a lot regarding computer games.) Unfortunately, I won’t become as good at it as I was with Civilization IV because I can no longer allow computer games to take over my life.

But I sure will try to spare a few minutes to listen to the music for Civilization VI.