Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Paleoanthropologist and director of the National Museum in Nairobi.
On the island
Eight records
Violin Concerto No. 5 in A major, K. 219 (Turkish)
Yehudi Menuhin with the Bath Festival Chamber Orchestra
Well, the first record is. Mozart, it's the violin concerto, number five by Yehudi Menoun.
Ee Mungu Nguvu Yetu (The Kenya National Anthem)
Well, the second record I'd like to play is is curiously, and perhaps people will be surprised, but it is the Kenya National Anthem. I feel very strongly that I am a Kenyan and that Kenya offers great hope for many people, and I feel very proud to belong
I'm going to ask here for you to play the theme tune of South Pacific, and I do this because. It really comes at a time in my life when I was beginning to become aware of myself as an individual. I saw the film as a teenager at a time when I was very prickly about being my father's son.
Main Title (Theme from Lawrence of Arabia)
The London Philharmonic Orchestra
I have no choice but to ask for the theme song of the film Lawrence of Arabia. My first explorations of Lake Turkana, the deserts of Turkana, were by Camel, and being somewhat of a romantic nothing tells me more about this romance that I enjoyed than this particular music.
this is Doctor Giivago, the film. It's again the opening theme tune. It's a film that impressed me greatly and it's a film that I found really quite emotional.
Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra
I choose this because I first heard it when I was in Sweden a few years ago. It was played to me by the wife of Professor Gustaf, Karl Gustaf. ... At that time I was in Sweden to discuss the first Nobel Symposium on human origins, and the fact that they were discussing this with me suggested that the science had matured
This one I'm going to ask for a song from Kenya. It's uh a song known as the Mattendoni Wedding Song, and it's a song that is often sung with accompanying music in Lamu, an island. in the north coast of Kenya, where I spend a lot of my free time.
Solo WhaleFavourite
My last record is going to be taken from the Songs of the Humpback Whale, these extraordinary marine mammals that are so beautiful in their song deep down below the oceans. And I would do this because on your island or my island as I would insist it become I would like to know that there are intelligent mammals all around me. who are also happy in their solitude.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:31How much does music mean to you?
Very, very little in the 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. ... And so I don't see music as part of my life when I'm away from from uh cities and things.
Presenter asks
5:11Did your parents take you three [boys] on their expeditions?
Sometimes, but not always, we were in a position where we had to go to school, which is always a sadness of any youth, I think. Um also they were working in rather remote places at times where water and food was very hard to come by, and if they were working in a place where water was scarce, we weren't taken, because they felt that giving a cup of water to useless hands was a waste of water.
Presenter asks
12:06Did you take it for granted that you were going to succeed your father?
No, and I still don't. To succeed such a great man would be very presumptuous. ... As a child I didn't know what I wanted to be. As a teenager I still didn't know what I wanted to be, except that I knew I wanted to be somebody. ... And so I thought the best way to get out of his shadow was to get out of his business
The keepsakes
The book
T. C. McLuhan
It's a book that contains more wisdom and more insight into the magnificence of the untampered human mind than anything I've ever read.
Presenter asks
14:26Did you have to go and get academic qualifications first [to follow your father]?
No, because it didn't start. I mean, it should have started like that, but it didn't. I really got out of the safari business, but stayed in the bush, and I found that One way to do this was to go and look for fossils ... But then I started to have ego problems again, because I had to take scientists with me. And although I often found things ... when it came to writing the papers that everybody gets kudos from, I was only mentioned in the footnote acknowledgments to Richard Leakey for a superb organizational job.
Presenter asks
17:07In your view, what's the most important and exciting discovery made so far in Africa?
I don't think there's one. I think it would be very misleading to isolate one specimen. We have many specimens, but I think the most. Intriguing evidence, and perhaps the most uh significant, is that Homo Erectus, that speaking man, which was thought to be Asiatic. ... is now known at an earlier date in Africa. which confirms the supposition That and the prediction. That Homo was African, that man is African
“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.”
“I was very concerned with the idea of trying to develop my own stature, my own reputation, my own position, in the shadow of my father, because there's no doubt he was well known and a famous man.”
“I'm a a specialist at back door entry.”