Chapman Keeps Straight Her ‘Matters of the Heart’ : Music: The singer, who plays Costa Mesa on Saturday, doesn’t compromise as artist or citizen.

Listening to some of Tracy Chapman’s songs, you’d think that fame and riches have turned out to be sour prizes for her, ones that pose a threat to personal and artistic integrity.

Fame and riches became issues in Chapman’s life after the extraordinary and surprising success of her 1988 debut album. Folk-based albums with quietly intense songs about social injustice and romantic crises aren’t expected to sell 9 million copies, as “Tracy Chapman” did worldwide.

With “Crossroads,” the title song and leadoff track from her 1989 follow-up album, Chapman seemed to be fending off intrusions brought by fame and wealth:

I’m trying to protect what I keep inside,

All the reasons why I live my life ...

All you folks think you run my life,

Say I should be willing to compromise.

At the emotional low point of her new album, “Matters of the Heart,” Chapman wonders starkly: “Have I become as corrupt as all I abhor?”

Speaking over the phone Wednesday from a tour stop in Santa Barbara, Chapman was confident that she has managed to avoid compromise and corruption as an artist. But she said those concerns apply not only to her ideals as a songwriter and performer, but to her responsibilities as a citizen in difficult times.

Actually, Chapman said, the song “Crossroads” was written before she had landed a record contract. But while not directly about the pressures of fame, she said, “it certainly could apply.”

From an artistic standpoint, Chapman said, “I think I’ve done OK. There are times I’ve felt this is taking a toll on me. You end up in this schedule dictated by the delivery of records and touring. It changes the way you live your life. But there are great rewards, and it’s balanced out. I have gone about making my records in the (way) that works for me and is not dictated by the marketplace and music industry likes and dislikes.”

So Chapman the songwriter-recording artist would seem to be in the clear when it comes to those self-doubts about corruption and compromise.

“But I do question the role that I play, not only as as Tracy Chapman, artist, but Tracy Chapman, citizen of the United States,” she added. “This is the identity I’ve chosen to take on, and what does that mean?”

On her new album, Chapman reaches her bleakest, most doubting emotional point in “If These Are the Things.” It’s the song in which she raises those fears about her own corruption and also begins to question whether ideals and achievements even matter: “If these are the things dreams are made of, why don’t I dream anymore?”

Chapman said the song rose out of her feelings at the time of the Persian Gulf War.

“Most people in this country had very ambivalent feelings about whether we should be over there as a military presence,” said Chapman, who favored economic sanctions rather than a shooting war. “This country was in a gray area. We’re Americans; we hold certain ideals, and it seemed (the war) was an instance when our actions were contradicting those ideals.”

Chapman isn’t one to pull punches in singing about perceived injustice--witness “Talkin’ ‘Bout a Revolution,” from her first album, and “Bang Bang Bang,” a mournful vision of what happens when people are left to fester hopelessly in urban decay. But in the case of “If These Are the Things,” her unhappiness about the world situation came out in an inward-directed song.

“I guess I just don’t think there’s such a clear-cut line between what is personal and what is political,” Chapman said in a soft speaking voice that is surprisingly high and delicate for a singer with such a firm, deep and grounded delivery.

“You can’t back away and disassociate yourself from the actions of your government or your community. At some point, individuals have to take responsibility for what the large structures that represent them do. The songs are all interwoven, (because) the personal and political isn’t that far apart. The (love) songs on the album aren’t necessarily about my own personal life, but the way we relate to other people. In some ways that’s affected by politics and social structure and class and race. It’s all in one big pot, with everything tossed in there together.”

“Woman’s Work” is one song with an autobiographical element, although its account of a hard-pressed working woman certainly has wider resonance.

Chapman said it was based on her upbringing, in Cleveland, by a working mom who raised her two daughters alone.

“It was a song I wrote in celebration of the fact she had managed to take care of us and herself, without much help and recognition of how hard it was for her.”

Chapman got her start as a folk singer during her years at a private high school in Danbury, Conn., that she attended on a scholarship. She went on to Tufts University in Boston, became a presence on the city’s coffeehouse scene and eventually made contacts that led to her deal with Elektra Records. Chapman moved from Boston to San Francisco about three years ago.

On each of her albums, she has inveighed against materialism and greed in such songs as “Mountain O’ Things,” “Material World” and the recent “So.” Of course, her success has left her in a position to have mountains of things, if she wishes.

But Chapman doesn’t see having wealth as a predicament.

“I certainly have a lot of questions about what do I do to be responsible, now that I find myself in that position,” she said. “I think I’ve got it figured out. I can take care of myself. If you can’t, you’re not in a place where you can help other people.”

While greed may be the cardinal evil in Chapman’s songs, “It’s important to know at the same time that money does talk in certain circumstances, and there’s a way to use that to make positive changes and positive statements about things that otherwise might not get heard.”

Tracy Chapman and Ipso Facto play Saturday at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Amphitheatre, 100 FairDrive, Costa Mesa. $22.55 to $25.85. (714) 740-2000 (Ticketmaster).