Thunder and lightning did not stop fans from dancing in the rain to Bembeya Jazz, a band from Guinea that made its Manhattan debut at the Central Park SummerStage on Sunday afternoon, following the pianist Randy Weston's group, African Rhythms.

The set was cut short by safety concerns, but it revealed why Bembeya Jazz is one of West Africa's most celebrated bands.

Bembeya Jazz was created in 1961, at a time when the Guinean government was sponsoring performing ensembles, and it quickly became one of the top bands in the country. Like many groups across Africa, it fused traditional lore with up-to-date music.

Bembeya Jazz drew on Manding griot songs and other folk material; it also incorporated horns, the Afro-Cuban rhythms of Congolese rumba, and the Hawaiian slide guitar, played by one of the founding members, the guitarist Sekou Bembeya Diabate.

Bembeya Jazz worked constantly until the late 1980's. The band made its last Guinean album in 1988, and reunited in 2002 to record ''Bembeya'' (World Village). Mr. Diabate and three other members -- Conde Mory Mangala on drums; the singer Salifou Kaba; and, on trumpet, the group's musical director, Mohamed Achken Kaba -- have been with Bembeya Jazz since the 1960's.

The brief set showed off a magnificent band, distinct from the hybrid groups that can be found in Guinea's northern neighbors, Senegal and Mali. Bembeya Jazz played easy-rolling rumbas, peppy six-beat rhythms and modal tunes with Manding roots. Mr. Diabate and two other guitarists made complex patterns sound breezy, sometimes performing synchronized dance steps as they played. Eventually the saxophone and the trumpet would join in, punching out short riffs.

The two singers moved between pop suavity and griot singing, but it was Mr. Diabate's guitar that was the commanding center of the music. When the guitars meshed, he was the first among equals; then his parts leaped out, zooming above the beat at double speed and rising until he strummed ringing, syncopated dissonances. In African pop even a flashy guitar sounds genial.

Mr. Weston's African Rhythms is a jazz group with African and Latin percussion (congas, timbales and maracas played by Neil Clarke). The set consisted of Mr. Weston's vamp travelogues, spanning Brooklyn, the Caribbean, Ghana and Morocco. Expansive solos from T. K. Blue and Billy Harper on saxophones and Benny Powell on the trombone were punctuated by Mr. Weston's terse, Monkish interjections and gusts of tremolo; Alex Blake on bass did nearly as much tapping and string snapping as plucking, a style befitting a group with roots in African drumming.

Photo: The guitarist Sekou Diabate was the commanding center of the group Bembeya Jazz on Sunday in Central Park. Lightning cut the concert short. (Photo by Jack Vartoogian for The New York Times)