New Orleans and Brazil Bring Beats to Lincoln Center Liliana Araújo, the Brazilian lead singer of the New York band Nation Beat, is at the microphone with Maracatu Nação Estrela Brilhante, a Brazilian group founded in 1906, at Damrosch Park. Two carnival cultures converged by way of New York City on Friday night at Damrosch Park. A Lincoln Center Out of Doors concert hailed the African diaspora kinship of two venerable parade traditions: Mardi Gras Indians from New Orleans, represented by Big Chief Monk Boudreaux and the Golden Eagles; and the maracatu de nação (nation maracatu) of Pernambuco, in northeastern Brazil, with Maracatu Nação Estrela Brilhante ("Maracatu Nation Bright Star"), from Recife. Big Chief Monk Boudreaux, right, a Mardi Gras Indian of New Orleans, performed with the Golden Eagles. Both styles rely on booming, swinging, danceable percussion and call-and-response chants that celebrate history and survival. And both feature flashy dressers. The Mardi Gras Indian tribes, or gangs, have chiefs who wear towering feathered suits with elaborately hand-beaded patches, while the maracatu nations have a king, a queen and ladies dressed as glitter-laden, color-saturated visions of the old Portuguese court. The show's New York City element was Nation Beat, the rock band led by the drummer and maracatu devotee Scott Kettner; its singer, Liliana Araújo, is Brazilian, and its lyrics are in Portuguese. Nation Beat has recorded with Maracatu Nação Estrela Brilhante and is touring the United States with the group, in shows billed as "A Tale of Two Nations." It's the first United States tour by members of Maracatu Nação Estrela Brilhante, which was founded in 1906. The group couldn't bring the platoons of drummers, singers and dancers that are assembled for carnival at home, just a 13-member core led by Mestre Walter Ferreira de França, who was also the lead singer. Even with a skeletal lineup, the rhythmic drive was formidable as syncopations volleyed between clattering cowbells and sputtering bass drums. The royal retinue - including Marivalda Maria dos Santos, the group's queen and president - arrived onstage in giant hoop skirts, under an awning-size umbrella, dancing as Portuguese aristocrats probably never did. Nation Beat meshed with the Brazilians for some plugged-in maracatu topped with rabeca, a short-bowed fiddle played by Dennis Lichtman. Then it had the stage to itself, with hybrid songs that drew on maracatu and other rural Brazilian rhythms, like the triangle-driven forró, but also glanced north of the border for hints of ragtime, New Orleans second line and, in Mark Marshall's guitar solos, wailing blues-rock. Big Chief Monk Boudreaux and the Golden Eagles brought the club version of their music, with costumed singers backed by a funk band. It's the way Mardi Gras Indians perform when it's not carnival time. Mr. Boudreaux, in bright yellow feathers, was flanked by a second chief, Bo Dollis Jr., plumed in blue; the band shifted the songs from tambourine-driven street chants toward R&B and, in one song, reggae. With the band bringing out his bluesy side, Mr. Boudreaux was a vigorous, authoritative singer. He and the band slowed down one Mardi Gras Indian staple, "Shallow Water," for a long modal-jazz prelude that Mr. Boudreaux turned into a dark incantation; then the tempo picked up, and it became a fierce survivor's boast. The concert ended, rightfully, with a parade. The New Orleans chiefs, still in their suits, joined the Brazilians in their royal finery, bolstered by percussionists from Maracatu New York, Mr. Kettner's other project. The rhythms swaggered and boomed across Damrosch Park, no amplification necessary.