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 is a rich and varied music which pervaded every aspect of life - from formal rituals to the casual activities and encounters of everyday life, such as 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 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."
In his book Chasing the Vibration Graham Lock quotes McGregor saying: "I have this strong imaginative reference to African village music, and the thing I know about that music is that it has a strong centre. It builds up, a lot of people do things together that they know."
Read more about this topic: Chris McGregor
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or influences:
“It was common practice for me to take my children with me whenever I went shopping, out for a walk in a white neighborhood, or just felt like going about in a white world. The reason was simple enough: if a black man is alone or with other black men, he is a threat to whites. But if he is with children, then he is harmless, adorable.”
—Gerald Early (20th century)
“Professors of literature, who for the most part are genteel but mediocre men, can make but a poor defense of their profession, and the professors of science, who are frequently men of great intelligence but of limited interests and education, feel a politely disguised contempt for it; and thus the study of one of the most pervasive and powerful influences on human life is traduced and neglected.”
—Yvor Winters (1900–1968)