Clegg Scores With Politics and Song in Ventura : Pop Music: South African performer stirs the conscious with a plea for peace.

Having spent most of the summer opening amphitheater shows for Tracy Chapman, Johnny Clegg at first seemed a bit reserved on Saturday at the Ventura Theatre in Ventura, as if not quite sure what to make of a house full of people on hand strictly to see him and his ground-breaking South African band Savuka.

But at the end of a perspiration-soaked, two-hour set, he clenched his fists and beamed the smile of a pitcher who had pulled out a victory he didn’t entirely expect.

It was no cheap win either, because the United States is one of the few places where Clegg (who plays the Wiltern Theatre on Tuesday) is still struggling to be noticed. In his homeland, and in much of Europe, he’s a certified star. Respected as something of a South African Elvis--the first white man to persuasively merge the music of that country’s black culture with that of his own European heritage--Clegg also has been painted as a latter-day John Kennedy for his charismatic and articulate support for a democratic South Africa.

It would be easy for a musician with Clegg’s credentials to fall back on anti-apartheid platitudes to guarantee cheers from sympathetic audiences. Instead, his songs grapple with the complexities of a country--and, indeed, a world--in which Nelson Mandela’s release from prison can be followed by strife between the very groups that should have been united by such a concession from their oppressors.

Thus, “Asimbonanga,” the stirring ballad Clegg wrote years ago as a prayer for Mandela’s release, was transformed Saturday into a plea for peace among all segments of a stratified society: “We are all islands till comes the day we cross the burning water.”

Admirable politics, however, don’t automatically translate into successful music. Fortunately, Clegg has in his corner an infectious musical stew that spices up familiar Western pop hooks and chordal resolution with spirit-awakening Zulu chants, intensely athletic dance steps and the soul-deep rhythmic inventiveness of Afro pop.

Occasionally, Clegg strives too hard for melodies that will win Western ears--the lackluster hard rock of “Berlin Wall,” for one-- and his affinity for tightly constructed Western pop songs sometimes is at odds with spontaneity-rich tradition of African music.

Still, if American radio programmers had any respect for music with this much variety, intellect and heart, they’d immediately put this band into the starting rotation.