POP MUSIC REVIEW : Self-Reliant Chapman Has a Little Help

There aren’t a lot of ways in which you might be tempted to compare Tracy Chapman to Madonna, but if nothing else, both of their current tours are triumphs of the modern zeitgeist of self-reliance. No other women in recent pop history have based their repertoires so strongly and successfully around the idea of not wanting to get kicked around.

Madonna ended her recent shows breathlessly chanting “keep it together” like a mantra and sent everyone home with the philosophical admonition, “Remember, no matter what you do, never doubt yourself.” Her new album includes yet another song about learning to love yourself.

Chapman, who plays tonight at the Pacific Amphitheatre and Monday at the Open Air Theatre in San Diego, is much too self-aware to avoid doubting herself. But she similarly trades in the concepts of tough love and, when that fails, self-love. “I’m gonna love myself / More than anyone else / I’m gonna treat me right / This time I’m gonna be my own best friend,” she sang with characteristic firmness during a powerful solo segment of her concert at the Greek Theatre Wednesday.

Similarities pretty much end there. Where there’s not much lingering irony in Madonna’s “Material Girl,” Chapman expresses nothing but contempt for those who chase after the “Material World.” More important, if Madonna’s self-help platitudes probably inspire nothing so much as harder and faster work-outs in the health clubs, Chapman is actually interested in working out personal and societal demons. Her victory feels more hard-fought, and inevitably more genuine.

It’s a fight she dukes out in a concert setting even more compelling than her first go-round of shows two years ago. Touring after her first smash album, Chapman played solo acoustic gigs at venues from the Roxy to the Coliseum (on the Amnesty International tour), a brave--and attention-getting--move. The austerity of playing such strong songs without a band finally made them sound more strident than they needed to be, placing too much gravity on protest-oriented tunesmanship that was already awfully weighty.

There are obvious limits to self-reliance, and it’s nice this time to see Chapman relying on the strength of a subtle backing band.

At the Greek, Chapman showed up with five low-key musicians, and never did they get in the way of her shy confidence or folkish intimacy. An upbeat number like “Born to Fight,” which sounded unduly cocky and overearnest in a solo context, took on more character performed with a lightly rollicking piano and upright bass backing that added the kind of sly, playful spin that Phil Ochs might have put on such an anthem.

And if on the recent “Crossroads” album Chapman’s righteous digs tend to overwhelm the more tender relational songs, these highly charged salvos took on more interesting shadings and found a better working context at the Greek. Her two sides converged most welcomely with a jazzy encore rendition of “A Change Is Gonna Come,” where Chapman loosened up physically and vocally in surprising ways. If she keeps that up, look out.

Johnny Clegg and Savuka opened with a crowd-pleasing “Zulu-rock crossover” act, as he put it, insistently exuberant as always. If you sense Clegg on record extending himself too far to make South African rhythms and liberational themes palatable to a mass audience, Wednesday’s hourlong opening set was happily free from the kind of pop overproduction that mars the albums.

Clegg, as outgoing as Chapman is reserved, joined his crewmen (and women) in the latter part of the set for some Zulu dancing and ritual reenactment that ignited a true perspirational party atmosphere. As personality types go, it’s certainly a well-balanced bill.

Tracy Chapman and Johnny Clegg & Savuka play tonight at 7:30 at the Pacific Amphitheatre, 100 Fair Drive, Costa Mesa. Tickets: $22.55 to $24.75. Information: (714) 634-1300.