Brotherhood Of Breath

The Brotherhood of Breath was a big band created, in the late 1960s, by South African pianist and composer Chris McGregor (1936–1990), essentially an extension of McGregor's previous band The Blue Notes. The Brotherhood of Breath included many members of the South African expatriate community resident in London, including McGregor himself, Louis Moholo, Harry Miller, Mongezi Feza, Dudu Pukwana, (occasionally) Johnny Dyani; and many of the free jazz musicians who were based in London at the same time: Lol Coxhill, Evan Parker, Paul Rutherford, Harry Beckett, Marc Charig, Alan Skidmore, Mike Osborne, Elton Dean, Nick Evans, and John Surman. The personnel was fluid, depending on who was available......

The music resembles a mixture of the hard-driving blues of Charles Mingus and the wild experimentalism of Sun Ra, but retains a unique feel due to the South African influences and the intelligent arrangements.

Links to Peel
The Brotherhood of Breath grew out of the Chris McGregor Group, which included the South African musicians mentioned above. They had attracted the attention of record producer Joe Boyd, who, as he recounts in his book White Bicycles, signed them to his Witchseason Productions company and produced an album by them, Very Urgent, for Polydor Records in 1968. Although Peel isn't known to have played anything from it on air, he may well have heard it - especially considering that Joe Boyd's Witchseason stable also included artists he liked, such as the Incredible String Band and Fairport Convention.

Joe Boyd also produced the first Brotherhood of Breath LP, which was released on RCA Records' "progressive" label Neon and promoted as progressive jazz-rock, rather than as jazz, and Chris McGregor was interviewed by a young Kid Jensen on his late-night Radio Luxembourg show Dimensions. The album wasn't a commercial success, but its most South African-sounding tracks, "Andromeda" and "Mra", picked up some radio airplay, as they were close to the style of popular London-based African bands of the era like Osibisa. The band also did two Peel sessions, in 1971 and 1972, at a time when the DJ and his producer John Walters seemed sympathetic to new music from the British jazz scene. After that, however, the Brotherhood of Breath disappeared from Peel's playlists, and became a respected act on the British and European jazz circuits during the 1970s and 1980s.

Festive Fifty Entries
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Sessions

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Other Shows Played
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