It snowed recently in Johannesburg. Reached two weeks ago at his home there, legendary South African singer and flugelhorn player Hugh Masekela started off a fascinating conversation by talking about the weather.

“It snowed three days ago,” the 68-year-old musician said. “It was our first snow in 20 years. Once in a  while it snows in Johannesburg. But this was a big snowfall… We’re used to the cold (in Johannesburg), but snow is rare. It’s particularly hard for poor people in the squatter camps and the farmer camps.”

Everything is political for Masekela, who was raised under his country’s oppressive apartheid regime. He left home in 1961, at the age of 22, and went to an international music career.

He was soon befriended by calypso great Harry Belafonte, and fellow South African singer Miriam Makeba (to whom he was married for a few years in the ‘60s), and went on to play in several jazz combos, before establishing his own illustrious career.

Masekela credits Belafonte woth pushing him to find his artistic voice. “He encouraged me to make a name for myself – him and Miriam… They said, if you become a musician, you’ll be a statistic, but if you infuse your home experience and your background into what you do, you’ll be very different from all of us. You’ll stand out, and we’ll learn something from you. That proved to be true, and put me where I am today.”

He scored a No. 1 Billboard hit with his 1968 song Grazing in the Grass. Before and after, he met and played with an international array of artists, including Fela Kuti, Salif Keitta, Herb Alpert, and Bob Marley. He also performed on albums by the Byrds and, most famously, Paul Simon on 1986’s Graceland. In 1990, as apartheid was coming to an end, Masekela moved back home, after 30 years of living abroad.

Despite South Africa’s dramatic turnaround in the past two decades, the struggle is far from finished, he said:

“The only change is we have our freedom. We’re not being hassled by police anymore for being black. We don’t have to have pass books, we can live where we want, and work where we want.

“But South Africa has been at war for 400 years. The occupying forces have done immeasurable damage that is going to take many generations to get over – especially because we own maybe 2 percent of the economy and 5 percent of the land. Everything was taken away from us. Poverty is still rife.”

Politics are ever-present on Masekela’s new double-CD, Live at the Market Theatre. Therein, he didcates the song Stimela to “all those people who lose their lives working in cheap labour;” the song Mandela to the South African freedom fighter (and post-apartheid president), his fellow former prisoners, and the sense of renewal and hope he brought with him upon his release from prison in 1990; and the song District Six to former residents of the Cape Town township who were forcibly evicted form their homes in 1965.

Throughout the recording, even when tackling heavy topics, Masekela's music flows with playfulness and soul. It sways with a natural ease, both in his fluid flugelhorn lines and the swinging South African vocal harmonies that answer his jubilant baritone singing voice.

"I'm not a music intellectual," he said. "I'm not an analyst or a theorist. I'm part of the community that likes to see people come to a show and have a good time… The duty of the artist is to bring joy to people. The other duty, especially with artists who come from deprived communities, is to highlight that deprivation. Musicians who don't do that last a few years, then disappear into themselves."

Masekela's upbringing was riddled with both good and bad fortune, a duality that has stayed with him throughout his life.

"I came from a very rich musical background," he said, "a rich heritage and traditional environment. But we were all oppressed. It was not pleasant, not for anybody black, living in South Africa. And I take it, not for the white people either. To a certain extent, people in a community of oppressors live an even more unhappy life…”

 Music was his saving grace.

“I’ve been a musician since I was six. It was a major escape valve for me… If I hadn’t been a musician, I would have died long ago, given my mouth.”

Mouth and all, Masekela is alive and well. His life story has been put into an autobiography, Still Grazing, which he encouraged me (and you) to pick up. “It’s an easy read, fast read. You won’t be able to put it down.”

As for his music career, it's just taking off, he said, noting that a new album is in the works. "I don't think my started until 1994 (when apartheid officially ended with Mandela's election).

"Freedom is a relative word in an pressed society… The effects of   oppression are all around me. Africa is in a heartbreaking situation. I don't walk around depressed, but I'm not necessarily impressed by what's going on."

Hugh Masekeia performs Tuesday at 8:30 p.m. at La Tulipe as part of the International Nuits d'Afrique Festival. Tickets cost $33.79. Call 514-790- 1245 or go to www.admission.com For more info on the festival, go to www.festivalnuitsdafrique.com.

By T’cha Dunlevy