Women's forthright voices sailed over South American percussion when the Latinas tour came to Symphony Space on Tuesday night.

Totó la Momposina from Colombia, Mariana Montalvo from Chile and Belo Velloso from Brazil appear on the collection "Latinas: Women of Latin America" (Putumayo World Music), and the label is sponsoring their nationwide tour. On Tuesday night, there was also a guest appearance by Marta Gómez from Colombia, who also appears on the album.

All are self-consciously making pop with traditional ingredients. The music is smoother and more theatrical than its sources, although the singers choose acoustic instruments and handmade sounds. Even the expatriates among them - Ms. Montalvo lives in Paris, Ms. Gomez in New Jersey - sang in praise of home and heritage.

The folksiest of the performers was Totó la Momposina, from the island Mompos off the Colombia coast. She is the daughter of musicians, and has researched and collected coastal songs. She wore a traditional-style tiered skirt and head wrap, and was backed by half a dozen musicians, mostly drummers. Her set was driven by the African-rooted rhythms of Colombia's Atlantic Coast, including the cumbia, which has made its way across Latin America.

Like much coastal music, her songs flaunt mixed origins: native American flutes, Spanish guitar, African drums and call-and-response vocals. Her voice could be bright and cutting over the drummers' six-beat propulsion and the sound of the gaita (wooden flute) or clarinet; she could also sound loving and forlorn as she turned to a Cuban-rooted son, and reverent when she sang an unaccompanied prayer for peace. Through the set, she sounded gutsy and resilient. Ms. Gomez, whose voice was sweeter, also drew on coastal rhythms for her two songs, including a ballad that yearned for peace in Colombia.

Ms. Montalvo, who left Chile in 1974 after Gen. Augusto Pinochet took power, comes out of the nueva canción (new song) movement that spread through Latin America in the 1960's and 70's; her set included a nueva canción anthem, "Gracias a la Vida."

Many of her songs are settings of Latin American poems about love, dignity and aspiration, with folklike melodies and a compassionate tone. At Symphony Space, she played the small Andean guitar called charango, strumming brisk but transparent rhythms. Her guitarist and flutist sometimes delved into jazz harmonies or a reggae beat, but they were just as likely to reach back to Andean rhythms.

Belo Velloso, the niece of the Brazilian songwriter Caetano Veloso, has a supple, airy voice that can caress a melody even when it rides a swaggering sambareggae beat. Many of her songs were about the state where she grew up, Bahia, and as her voice paid tender tribute to landmarks and cultural legacies, she also danced and shimmied the samba, despite her high heels.

The Latinas tour continues at Hillwood Recital Hall at the C. W. Post campus of Long Island University in Greenvale, N.Y., tomorrow; Gordon Theater at Rutgers in Camden, N.J., on Saturday; and Queensborough Community College Theater in Bayside, Queens, on Sunday.