Guide this South African star to center of the stage

Vusi Mahlasela’s appearance Friday at the Skirball Center was something closer to a happening than a concert. More than the performance of a collection of songs, it was a warmly personal encounter with the life and times of a rare and mesmerizing musical mind.

The South African singer, songwriter and guitarist began with a solo piece for voice and his instrument. Playing powerful rhythmic accompaniment, he unleashed his remarkable voice, lifting it into stratospheric head tones, driving it through growls, yelps and shouts, shifting to sudden passages of warm lyricism.

It was an astonishing display of versatility, the product of a voice that seems to have few limits.

Mahlasela was accompanied by his band -- guitarist Matt Heulitt, bassist Mark Calderon and drummer Ian Herman -- for the balance of the program, and their backing was superlative. Occasionally, they provided subtle, understated vocal accompaniment. A few times, Mahlasela engaged in high jinks, dashing at Heulitt and Calderon while holding his guitar like a lance, retreating as they chased him back.

The glue that held the performance together was Mahlasela’s singular presence. His tales of growing up during the painful era of apartheid, his descriptions of night vigils and protest marches, told in a grippingly quiet manner, set the stage for one compelling number after another, mostly from his new album, “Guiding Star.”

There were moments of sardonic humor, as well. At one point, Mahlasela announced a tune titled “Jail Break,” then proceeded to scratch the strings of his instrument, simulating the sound of a metal file scraping at the bars of a jail cell.

The most touching offering was “River Jordan,” dedicated to his mother, and introduced with a painful description of the day she collapsed in church and died.

Although Mahlasela is well-known in Africa both as a musician and as an ambassador for the Nelson Mandela Foundation’s 46664 campaign to raise awareness of AIDS/HIV, his visibility is relatively low in the U.S., where he has toured, usually as an opening act. It’s time for this talent of such magnitude to receive the center-stage attention he so fully deserves.