Making it in the music business is tough.

Making it big as a black South African musician seems impossible.

Yet Hugh Masekela has accomplished this. The trumpeter/singer/composer will perform at 8 tonight in Eisenhower Auditorium.

Using the African music he grew up with, his unique style of music also enters the realm of reggae, jazz, pop and rhythm and blues.

"He epitomizes the concept of universal music in that he combined many of the African and Western music traditions in his playing. He essentially says that music is a universal language," said Lawrence Young, director of the Paul Robeson Cultural Center.

Born in Witbank, South Africa, Masekela started as a trumpeter there. The lack of schools in South Africa led him to study in London's Guildhall School of Music and then at the Manhattan School of Music in New York.

"He was just one of those who got out," said Saundra Edwards, assistant director of the cultural center. Even today, in a freer South Africa, chance seems to control how people leave the country, she added.

Masekela made his American debut with vocalist Miriam Makeba, and continued to record through the '60s and '70s.

"I remember 25 to 30 years ago he was popular," Edwards said.

Getting even more involved in the '80s, he founded the Botswana International School of Music.

About that time he became known for his championing of human rights.

"I think that Hugh Masekela has been a very important figure in terms of connecting African Americans to the plight of South Africans through his music," Young said, adding that Masekela's work heightened awareness in this country of the South African government's prejudice.

Touring with Paul Simon on the Graceland tour, forming his own Kalahari band and writing the musical Sarafina! were Maskela's accomplishments in the late '80s. His album Uptownship hit the top 20 of the Billboard's Contemporary Jazz and the top five of the World Music categories in spring 1990.

His role as a champion of human rights is an inextricable part of his unique music.

"He's advanced the acceptance of all humanity through his music . . . what he has said is that his ethnic origins or his nationality should not supersede his humanity and the music is the way he connects to other people," Young said.

Tickets are available at Eisenhower and Schwab box offices.