On "Women of Latin America," a recent album from world-music compiler Putumayo, Toto la Momposina, Mariana Montalvo and Belo Velloso are just three of 11 voices, allotted a single song each. Friday night at Lisner Auditorium, where they were billed as "Latinas: Women of Latin America," the three singers revealed themselves as individual stylists, each combining African, Iberian and Native American influences in her own manner.
Accompanied by two guitarists and a drummer, Velloso opened the show with a pleasant, if brief, selection of strolling Brazilian tunes. Her music showed significantly less range than that of her uncle, eclectic singer-songwriter Caetano Veloso, but then she's a comparative newcomer, and was given only 20 minutes to introduce herself.
Montalvo, who followed with a slightly longer set, is a Chilean exile who's lived in France for 30 years. The singer-guitarist's mode was jazzier, suggesting a Parisian influence. Yet the interplay between her guitar and Pierre Bluteau's sounded entirely Latin American, while the plaintive countermelodies of Olivier Ombredane's flute evoked Andean traditional music.