Hello I'm Kirstie Young and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive.

The program was originally broadcast in 1981 and the presenter was Roy Plumlee. This week our cast weighs the paleoanthropologist Richard Leakey.

Richard, how much does music mean to you?

Very, very little in this strict sense because the greatest sound of all to me is natural

silence, the silence that you get on the open plains of Africa in the deserts of Africa in the forests of Africa.

There's not really a silence because there are very subtle sounds.

There's the sound of the wind in the grass or the trees, there's the distant sound of birds or insects,

and sometimes the sound of animals. It's a very loud noise in one sense, and so I don't see music as part of my life when I'm away from

from cities and things. So when you're on a site you don't bother to take discs

or cassettes with you? Never at all, but when I come to cities,

it's a very different issue

because I find the silence of cities,

the sounds of the cities,

or the lack of sound completely in these gate concrete buildings that you live in, very foreboding.

And I do, if I take a flat in London or New York, yearn to have some attractive sounds, and I will then make use of a tape recorder or a record if it's available.

Have you any musical skill yourself? Do you sing or play an instrument absolutely none none at all I

I'm laughed at by my family for my complete ignorance about music what's the first

record you tell the first record you've told?

Well, the first record is Mozart.

It's the violin concerto, number five by Yihudi Minouin. The The The The The Part of the first movement of Mozart's violin concerto number five, the Turkish concerto, Yehooohu Emanuen with the Bath

Festival Chamber Orchestra. Now you live in Kenya, you are in fact a citizen of Kenya.

Yes, I am indeed that the entire family are.

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