Masekela Trumpets a Blend of African Roots, Jazz : Music: He says it took a while to find the formula, which will be on display tonight, Tuesday at San Diego’s Rhythm Cafe.

Mention South Africa and one gets a mental picture of a country out of control--apartheid, neo-Fascism, rival tribes and political factions at war, all tearing the land asunder. But there is, of course, a gentler side to South Africa and its people, perhaps best exemplified by their spiritual, redemptive music.

Among South Africa’s best known native musicians are Miriam Makeba, Abdullah Ibrahim (a.k.a. Dollar Brand), Ladysmith Black Mambazo and perhaps most of all Hugh Masekela, who performs tonight and Tuesday at the Rhythm Cafe in San Diego (no performances at the Rhythm Cafe in Santa Ana are scheduled).

Masekela, 57, has been playing his trumpet stateside since the early ‘60s when Harry Belafonte brought him to the United States on a music scholarship. But Masekela wasn’t performing the music of his homeland in those days--rather, he was imitating the sounds of American jazz he had heard on the radio back home.

“I came over here as a be-bopper,” he recalled during a recent interview. “I had been in a band with Dollar Brand called the Jazz Epistles and we were like the forerunners of the modern jazz movement in South Africa. We all wore berets and dark glasses and knew everything about American jazz musicians, like we were walking encyclopedias.

“When I came here I was helped by a lot of people including Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis, and they said: ‘Why don’t you play some of your own stuff from your own country, man? Otherwise, you’ll be just another be-bop statistic.’ ”

Heeding their advice, Masekela hybridized his jazz training with the soothing, melodic sound of traditional South African music. He found great inspiration in the work of John Coltrane, whose experiments with ethnic music and free jazz in the mid-’60s reminded Masekela of the music he had grown up with.

“When I first heard Trane he had a tremendous spiritual whack on me, because he was into a modal thing which sounded very much like some of the traditional music I heard growing up, way deep in the countryside.”

But Masekela didn’t limit himself to performing for and socializing in jazz circles. His heady, liberated music also went over big with a younger generation of listeners. He was not one to be pigeonholed; his sound was as eclectic as his following.

By the late ‘60s he had been befriended by such rock musicians and movie stars of the era as Bob Dylan, David Crosby, Dennis Hopper, Jerry Garcia, Peter Fonda and Janis Joplin. A highlight of his career was performing at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967 (part of his electrifying set was included in D.A. Pennebaker’s film documentary of the event, “Monterey Pop”).

“I spent the flower-power years in California and hung out with a lot of people active in the anti-war movement,” Masekela said. “But at the same time I was opening for, like, the Four Tops, the Temptations and Stevie Wonder and I was doing all the jazz festivals. I never wanted to be known in just one category of music. I wanted to play many different things.

“The Leonard Feathers and them were the only ones concerned over what I was. The critics and analysts couldn’t figure out what I was doing and I never really cared much what they said about me. If it wasn’t for the musicians, they wouldn’t even have a gig anyway.”

Critical confusion or no, Masekela’s records were selling. 1968 was particularly fruitful: His albums from that year, “Hugh Masekela is Alive and Well at the Whisky” and “The Promise of a Future” remain among his most popular efforts, and that summer, his single “Grazing in the Grass” charted at No. 1.

Though he hasn’t had that kind of commercial success since then, he has maintained a loyal following, and he picked up many new fans during the ‘80s when he was one of several South Africans taking part in Paul Simon’s “Graceland” tour. Masekela performed on and off with Simon for two years.

“The Graceland experience helped to open it up a lot for me,” he said. “Nobody up to that point had given a damn about South African musicians and it was a great gesture. It gave great exposure to the music and to the people who had been isolated for so very long over there.”

Simon took a measure of heat from some quarters for recording in South Africa (which had been boycotted by many artists as a gesture of their opposition to apartheid) and for seeming to exploit South African musicians for his own success. Masekela doesn’t see it that way.

“It was a reciprocal relationship,” he said. “Certainly it benefited him but it also benefited everyone he worked with.”

Masekela continues to perform worldwide and continues to blend American and South African music. His just-released “Beatin’ Around De Bush’ (RCA) melds jazz fusion with his native folk music and South African a cappella melodies.

He takes great pride in Africa’s rich musical heritage and views himself as a goodwill ambassador for his people and their traditions.

“I think the most popular music always comes from people whose origins are in Africa, whether they come from Africa, America, Brazil or the Caribbean,” he said.

“Culturally, I think it was the first group of people the world got in contact with. When they brought the slaves over here, they found them singing.”

* Hugh Masekela plays tonight and Tuesday at 8 at the Rhythm Cafe, 8022 Clairemont Mesa Blvd., San Diego. $20. (619) 576-CAFE.