McCall Smith’s playlist

The Herald has teamed up with Sally Magnusson, who set up Playlist for Life in 2013. The charity aims to make it possible for every person with dementia to have access to a playlist of personally meaningful music from their life, delivered via an iPod. Research has shown that meaningful music offers a key to unlocking individuality, to “bringing back” that person, as well as supporting family and wider social connections. See www.playlistforlife.org.uk

Have you created a playlist for a loved one? If so, email and tell us at sophiemclean@ymail.com

ALEXANDER MCCALL SMITH

The first song on my playlist would be Soave Sia Il Vento, the trio from Mozart’s Così Fan Tutte. The title means “May the breeze that takes you on your journey be a gentle one”.

I think it is one of the most beautiful pieces of music ever composed.

The first time I heard it was when I saw a film called Sunday Bloody Sunday in the 1970s. I distinctly remember the beautiful way it was integrated into one of the scenes.

I often listen to music when I’m writing and when I’m sitting down to start work on a chapter of the Isabel Dalhousie novels I usually play Soave Sia Il Vento because it puts me in the right frame of mind for the task.

And your second song?

A very beautiful song called Kothbiro by an East African musician called Ayub Ogada. His music is very gentle. It’s typical of African music which uses lovely repetitive rhythms and which somehow seem to have a very calming effect. It takes me back to those landscapes of Africa that I find very important. I see plains, I see a wide sky, I almost smell that dry smell of the high plains, and I see purple in the distance.

When the rainy season comes the sky in the distance will turn purple and there’s a sense of relief at the arrival of the rain.

It reminds me of the gentle side of

Africa which is something very spiritual and something I spend a lot of time in my Botswana books talking about.

Mma Ramotswe represents kindness, a sort of non-judgemental compassion and forgiveness.

How important was music when you were growing up?

I didn’t come from a particularly musically talented family but we had a piano and an old Pye radiogram with a radio on the top and a turntable underneath. It could play 45s and 78s.

You put the records in a stack and a little arm would come across, rather like a Flintstones device, knock one of the 78s off and down it would go. I was about 11 years old and I paid good money for it from my own pocket money. And I’ve just listened to that for the first time in over half a century!