On his latest project, jazz guitarist and vocalist Jonathan Butler returned to his native South Africa to record a live CD and DVD. Released last October, Jonathan Butler: Live From South Africa features live footage culled from his tour of his home country, where he has been a beloved music star since the age of 12, as well as a documentary recording his return to the Cape Town ghetto where he was raised.

"It was an amazing voyage," says Butler, who has lived in England and California since fleeing South Africa in the early '80s. "We lived in what was basically a shack. All the brothers were in one room, all the sisters in one room, and my parents in their room. It was a very rough part of town, and we had very little. And unfortunately not much has changed. Apartheid has gone, but it's still a very hard place. Today the things we have to overcome are AIDS and poverty."

Butler, who performs at the Cannon Center tonight with saxophonist Boney James headlining, was the last of 12 children born to Elisabeth and Abraham Butler. Abraham was a musician and all of his children followed in their father's footsteps. Jonathan Butler remembers first laying hands on the guitar when he was 4 years old.

"All my siblings played and sang, and there were always instruments lying around," he says. "As early as I can remember I was the type of child who would just sing for people."

When he was 7 years old, Butler began performing for audiences as part of his brother's band. By the age of 12, he was a seasoned professional musician, touring the country nonstop earning money to help the family survive.

At this time Butler was approached about making a record. In 1973 his cover of Burt Bacharach's "Please Stay" went to number two on the South African pop charts. More importantly, it became the first record by a black artist to be played on white South Africa radio.

"It was a huge event that reverberated through all South Africa," remembers Butler. "It happened so fast and got so huge. There were crowds everywhere we went."

The success continued for Butler. He became the youngest performer to win the Sarie Award, South Africa's equivalent of a Grammy. But his popularity only served to bring into focus for him the inequities of South African society.

"I won the (Sarie), but they didn't run the picture in the paper," he recalls. "I was this big star, but I was still living in a shack with no electricity with my family."

Butler began to inject his growing social consciousness into his music, writing lyrics that addressed the injustices of the day. Musically he began to grow as well. He moved away from the Bacharach covers to develop a sound that drew on local music traditions, jazz, and the influence of heroes like Stevie Wonder and especially George Benson, the guitarist who has had the biggest influence on him.

In the late '70s, Butler began to expand his career beyond the borders of South Africa, and in the 1980s he left his homeland to move to England. He has since become a top international draw and earned two Grammy nominations.

But the influence of his home country persists in his remarkably varied career. Whether performing in a classical setting as on the recent Pop Goes Classical collaboration with Juanita Bynum, performing his own gospel material on the 2007 studio effort Brand New Day, or surveying his career before an appreciative South African crowd, Butler brings the same warm, soulful delivery.

"I'm very dedicated to keeping the music of South Africa alive," he says. "It's an incredibly rich and diverse tradition and runs through everything I do."

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PREVIEW

Boney James featuring Jonathan Butler and Latoya Baker; 8 tonight at the Cannon Center for the Performing Arts, 255 N. Main St.

Tickets: $100, $68, $65 and $55; available at the Cannon Center box office, open noon-5 p.m., (901) 576-1269, and all Ticketmaster outlets, including by phone at (901) 525-1515 and online at ticketmaster.com. Visit thecannoncenter.com.