CHRIS MCGREGOR
Genres: Progressive Big Band, Avant-Garde Jazz • South Africa

Christopher McGregor (24 December 1936 – 26 May 1990), was a South African jazz pianist, bandleader and composer born in Somerset West, South Africa. 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 he was exposed to the music of the local amaXhosa people. This music is a rich and varied music which pervaded every aspect of life - from formal rituals to the casual activities and encounters of everyday life, like herding cattle or just walking home in the evening. Music was everywhere. And this music, as explained in Dave Dargie's seminal 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 composser/arranger and as band leader: "... a great number of style read more...