Minstrel Man’s Songs Speak Louder Than Words : Concert: Multicultural troubadour Paul Tracey blends music and narrative to teach children the value of books and self-motivation.

An Englishman with South African roots, Paul Tracey is a minstrel in the true sense of the word.

In the 30 years since Tracey left his father’s Johannesburg chicken farm to pursue a career in music, he has brought his talents to Broadway stages and small town prisons, Irish villages and American shopping malls. In short, “everywhere you could find a few people together.” On Saturday at noon, he will rest his heels in La Habra for a free performance of his one-man show, “Multicultural Minstrel Man,” at the Children’s Museum at La Habra.

Tracey, 52, a man with a lilting voice and easy laugh, uses the tale of his colorful career as the basis for “Multicultural Minstrel Man,” weaving narrative, musical demonstrations and original songs into a double-edged lesson on the importance of books and the value of self-motivation. The concert is being held in conjunction with the museum’s current communication-themed exhibit, “Kids in Touch.”

Born in Durban, South Africa, Tracey attended English boarding schools. After graduation, he went to Johannesburg, where his father, a musicologist specializing in African music, maintained a farm (“Actually, it was about 150 acres of rocks,” Tracey quipped).

A self-taught guitarist, Tracey’s musical career began when he and his brother, Andrew, formed the Tracey Brothers, presenting folk concerts around the countryside.

A Johannesburg theatrical producer caught their act and asked them to create a stage show for a short run at a local theater. With a small company, they debuted “Wait a Minim!,” a musical satire that “poked fun at all the nationalities who co-existed in South Africa,” (The title itself is a pun; a minim is a musical half-note.) The show, originally scheduled to run six weeks, ran for seven years, touring South Africa, the United States, Canada, New Zealand and Australia, and racking up extended runs at London’s Fortune Theatre and on Broadway. It closed in 1968.

After a stint in New York and a few Broadway roles, Tracey arrived in Southern California in 1976. Through Affiliate Artists, an organization that plans corporate-sponsored community concerts, and Performing Tree, a Los Angeles-based firm that coordinates educational shows for schools and youth groups, Tracey was on the road again refining his repertoire, which in addition to “Multicultural Minstrel Man” includes “About Africa” and “On Britain.”

The latter two trace the cultural heritage of those nations through music, costume and dance. Summers often find him as featured artist with the American Waterways Wind Orchestra, which performs aboard a 200-foot barge to waterfront towns across the United States and abroad.

“In (‘Minstrel Man’), I try to show that there are wonderful opportunities out there,” Tracey explained by phone from his home in Pacific Palisades. “No one ever told me I could be a wandering minstrel. My mother wanted me to be an accountant! It came as a tremendous, delightful surprise when I found I could make a living this way.”

Tracey, who also wrote four songs for “The Muppet Show,” performs several original tunes in “Minstrel Man” and demonstrates familiar and not-so-familiar instruments including the kalimba, his father’s adaptation of the African mbira, a reed instrument that is plucked instead of blown. But the centerpiece is a song entitled “I Found It in a Book,” which describes how reading helped launch his career.

“At 14, I taught myself how to play the guitar,” he said. “How did I learn? I found it in a book.” Between verses, Tracey demonstrates the guitar and displays books similar to the ones he used.

“Where do you go for facts? How do you make an instrument? . . . .You go to the library, where there are all sorts of books written by some absolutely brilliant people that will tell you how to make a drum from a coffee can or oatmeal box.

“The goal is to get kids to read, but the message is also ‘Get on with it. Don’t wait to be taught. Teach yourself.’ ”

Singer Paul Tracey presents “Multicultural Minstrel Man,” a one-man family show, at noon on Saturday at the Children’s Museum at La Habra, 301 S. Euclid St., La Habra. Museum admission: $2.50 to $3. For information, call (714) 905-9793.