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."