Chris Mcgregor
Christopher McGregor (24 December 1936 – 26 May 1990) was a South African jazz pianist, bandleader and composer born in Somerset West, South Africa.
Early influences
McGregor grew up in the then Transkei (now part of the Eastern Cape Province), where his father was headmaster at a Church of Scotland mission institution called Blythswood. Here McGregor was exposed to the music of the local amaXhosa people.
This music, as explained in Dave Dargie’s book Xhosa Music, is complex. Dargie mentions the following as examples of this complexity which might be seen to have influenced McGregor in his own music, both as composer/arranger and as band leader: “…a great number of style characteristics are to be found: relating not only to harmony and scale, but to melody, structure and phrasing, form, rhythm, instrumentation, singing techniques, and so on.
