Judith de los Santos (born 1982), known professionally as Malukah, is a Mexican composer and singer-songwriter known for her cover versions of music from video games or TV series and movies, which she publishes on YouTube. She became known to an international audience when a video of her cover of the song The Dragonborn Comes from the game The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim became a viral video in November 2011. Since then she has contributed to several video game soundtracks, composed and produced original music, and performed live.
Career
Early career and education
Being a gamer since childhood, Judith de los Santos grew up with gaming related music. She started writing songs and singing at the age of 15, took guitar, piano and percussion lessons to later study at the Berklee College of Music. She graduated in 2005 with a dual major in Music Production and Engineering and Film Scoring with her debut album All of the Above.
YouTube and video game soundtracks
In November 2011, shortly after the release of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, her cover version of the game's song The Dragonborn Comes went viral. The video was reposted on the IGN YouTube channel as well as gaming-related websites and became quickly popular. The original video on her own channel has over 23 million views, while the version on IGN's channel has over 17 million views by February 2020. This and other popular videos, including songs set to music from the Mass Effect, Halo and The Witcher game series helped her to obtain work in the video game industry.
She was commissioned to provide vocals for songs for the game Call of Duty: Black Ops II in 2012, The Banner Saga franchise (collaborating with Austin Wintory, Taylor Davis and Peter Hollens). In 2014, she composed and sang the ingame NPC bard songs and the end credits song Beauty of Dawn for the MMORPG Elder Scrolls Online. She was invited to be a part of an upcoming symphony project by video game composer Jeremy Soule, The Northerner. She provided vocals for music in the short film The Forge, collaborating with Austin Wintory and Tina Guo. She worked with Peter Hollens on a cover version of the Civilization IV Theme (originally composed by Christopher Tin) Baba Yetu. Together they also worked on a cover of Lullaby of Woe, a song from the Witcher 3 soundtrack. Her vocals were featured in the song Outside the Realm in the 2nd season Stranger Things soundtrack. The song was originally composed by Big Giant Circles for the video game There Came an Echo and was reused as thematic music for this purpose. She also worked with Miracle of Sound on his popular song Legends of the Frost based on the video game The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. She is featured on the Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 soundtrack. She provided vocal effects for the game Far Cry Primal working with BAFTA award-winning composer Jason Graves. Recently, she contributed to the soundtracks of the video games Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 and the PlayStation 4 Virtual reality game Moss. She and other musicians were invited by CD Projekt musical director Marcin Przybyłowicz to participate in a music video that recreates The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt main theme to celebrate the game's 5th anniversary in 2020. Lately, she contributed vocals to music to the game The Pathless and worked on vocal editing the Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War song Alone.
Live performances, streaming and original music
She performed the Halo tribute song Frozen Sleep at the Halo Global Championships 2013 at PAX Prime. Furthermore, she performed video game music at SXSW and The Game Awards. She was a guest performer at the Video Games Live E3 concert 2014 in Los Angeles and in her hometown Monterrey in 2016. She was invited to sing at The Elder Scrolls Online tavern community event during Gamescom 2018 in Cologne, Germany. She performed at the Argentina Game Show in Buenos Aires in 2019 and the CES 2020 in Las Vegas. In 2023 she was live performing in Las Vegas at the Elder Scrolls Online community event.
Malukah streamed as a partnered streamer on Twitch for almost 1,000 hours between 2016 and 2020, having reached 662,000 views and 38,800 followers in the music & performing arts and gaming category. Since 2020, she focused live streaming on YouTube.
In 2019, she released her latest original album I Follow the Moon.