Blue Notes

The Blue Notes were a South African jazz group formed in Cape Town in the early 1960s and led by pianist Chris McGregor, with Dudu Pukwana, Mongezi Feza, Nikele Moyake, Johnny Dyani and Louis Moholo. A racially mixed band under apartheid, they left the country in 1964 and settled in London, where their mix of township music and free jazz fed into the British avant-garde. The Blue Notes came to notice at the 1963 National Jazz Festival in Johannesburg. In 1964 they played the Antibes Jazz Festival, then spent time in Zurich and Geneva before a run at Ronnie Scott's in London in 1965.