Over the next week, a dazzling array of international vocalists performs around the Bay Area, each representing a rich musical tradition with roots stretching from Africa to Europe. What they all have in common is that they are five strong women steeped in their birth culture but not bound by it, creating music with such compelling rhythms and melodies that one needn't understand Spanish, Portuguese or Cape Verde's Criolu to discern their emotional themes.

Three of the singers, Chile's Mariana Montalvo, Colombia's Toto La Momposina and Brazil's Belo Velloso, make their Bay Area debut as part of the Putumayo World Music's Women of Latin America tour. The tour marks an ambitious new chapter for Putumayo, the independent, New York label that has revolutionized the marketing and distribution of music from far-flung locales, raising awareness of peoples and cultures from Zimbabwe to the Arabian Peninsula.

Mariana Montalvo fled Chile in 1974 to escape the widespread repression following Augusto Pinochet's bloody coup the year before, and began singing professionally to support herself as a college student in Paris. Over the past three decades, she has built on the socially conscious nueva cancion tradition, and is best known for setting the work of Latin American poets to music. She released her first U.S. album on Putumayo, "Cantos del Alma," in 1999, and recently followed up on World Village with "Piel de Aceituna."

While Belo Velloso is the least known artist on the tour, her family name resonates the most widely. The niece of superstar Brazilian singer/songwriter Caetano Veloso and his sister, the passionate vocalist Maria Bethânia, Velloso has been immersed in music from birth. Born and raised in Bahia's capital, Salvador, the heart of Afro-Brazilian culture, she has developed a repertoire of songs encompassing much of Brazil's modern musical tradition, from Dorival Caymmi and bossa nova to contemporary works by Adriana Calcanhotto, a rising Brazilian singer/songwriter who is also featured on the "Women of Latin America" album.

Toto La Momposina also hails from a highly musical family, but her musical roots stretch back well into the 19th century. Christened Sonia Bazanta de Oyaga, La Momposina took her stage name in honor of her home region, the island of Mompos, which served as a haven for African slaves escaping the sugar cane plantations of Cuba. As in every land touched by the African diaspora, Colombia's music is deeply marked by the rhythmic sophistication and vocal practices of West Africa. By the time La Momposina was in her late teens, she had begun systematically studying the Afro-Colombian folklore of the Atlantic coast, traveling from village to village. For years she served as a cantadora, which translates as singer but is more of a healer and counselor figure. Her most recent album, "Pacanto," released in the United States by World Village, is a masterpiece that sounds like a tour through Colombia's Caribbean coast, artfully mixing indigenous flutes (gaitas), maracas, surging percussion and the small South American guitar known as the tiple.

While Cape Verdean singer Maria de Barros isn't part of the Women of Latin America tour, she has benefited greatly from her association with Putumayo. Her seductive premiere album, "Nha Mundo" (My World), came out on Narada World last year, featuring an array of appealing grooves, from reggae and samba to bossa nova and coladeira, a sprightly Cape Verdean dance rhythm. De Barros, who mostly sings in the Cape Verdean creole language of Criolu, performs at Berkeley's Ashkenaz on Friday as part of the Taproots concert series and at Kuumbwa in Santa Cruz on Saturday.

Born in Senegal and raised in Mauritania, De Barros moved with her parents to Rhode Island at age 11, joining a thriving, close-knit Cape Verdean community in Providence. In high school she started singing at weddings and celebrations, performing every weekend at Cape Verdean functions. "It was like being in Cape Verde," De Barros says. "My parents wanted to make sure we kept our roots, that we'd be proud of where we came from."

Largely unknown in North America, the Catalan vocalist Maria del Mar Bonet has yet to find her way onto a Putumayo release. A major figure in Europe, she makes her Bay Area debut on Wednesday at the Napa Valley Opera House. Born on the island of Majorca, Bonet came of age as an artist in the late 1960s, performing with a group of Catalan composers and singers known as Els Setze Jutges (the Twelve Judges), a name taken from a children's tongue twister. Performing in their native language, they faced constant pressure from Franco's censors, as Catalan and Spain's other regional languages were banned from public life. When Bonet was prohibited from singing one of her most popular songs, she started performing in France, Great Britain and Denmark, eventually winning critical acclaim and a devoted following.

For Bonet, singing in Catalan wasn't an act of protest as much as an affirmation of her identity. "I was using my language, not just as resistance, but because it is my language," Bonet says in Spanish from Barcelona. "It wasn't with the purpose to go against the dictator. It was the dictator who was against me."

Bonet's repertoire encompasses traditional Balearic songs she heard while growing up in Majorca, contemporary Catalan poetry set to music, and her original pieces, which draw on a wide array of Mediterranean influences, from Turkey and North Africa to Sardinia, Sicily and Greece. A tremendously dramatic performer with a plush, throaty contra-alto, she is touring with a versatile trio featuring 12-string guitar, accordion and percussion.

As with De Barros, Montalvo, Velloso and La Momposina, Bonet's music is immeasurably richer for her insistence on maintaining ties to her culture.

7:30 p.m. Tuesday at the Claire Loftus Carriage House Theatre, Saratoga. $35-$45. (408) 961-5858; villamontalvo.org

8 p.m. Wednesday at Jackson Hall/ Mondavi Center for Performance Arts, UC Davis, 1 Shields Ave., Davis. $26-$36. (530) 754-2787; mondaviarts.org

8 p.m. Friday at Marin Veterans' Memorial Auditorium, 10 Avenue of the Flags, San Rafael. $24-$30. (415) 499-6800 .

Maria de Barros

9:30 p.m. Friday at Ashkenaz, 1317 San Pablo Ave., Berkeley. $15. (510) 525-5054; ashkenaz.com

7:30 and 9:30 p.m. Saturday at Kuumbwa Jazz Center, 320-2 Cedar St., Santa Cruz. $17-$21. (831) 427-5531; zook beat.com .

Maria del Mar Bonet

8 p.m. Wednesday at Napa Valley Opera House, 1030 Main St., Napa. $15-$27; (707) 226-7372; napaval leyoperahouse.org

7:30 p.m. Thursday at Osher Marin Jewish Community Center, 200 San Pedro Road, San Rafael. $30. (415) 444-8000; marinjcc.org

8 p.m. Friday at Dinkelspiel Auditorium, Stanford University, Palo Alto. $34-$38. (650) 725-2787; lively arts.stanford.edu

7:30 p.m. next Sunday at Kuumbwa Jazz Center, 320-2 Cedar St., Santa Cruz. $21-$25. (831) 427-5531; zookbeat.com

Andrew Gilbert is a freelance writer.