When Ejigayehu "Gigi" Shibabaw was attending church as a young girl in her native Ethiopia, little did she know that the religious music she found so fascinating was literally based on musical modes handed down to the Ethiopian Jewish church centuries before. Their "gospel singers," the now locally despised Azmari minstrels, were like angry folk singers taking aim at Ethiopian culture with savage tongue and cutting wit. Even today, Gigi is not welcome at home. In Ethiopia, folk music is despised.

"That is true of musicians in general, not just the Azmaris," Gigi told The Unesco Courier in 1997. "My father, for example, is a businessman, and is very hostile to the fact that I am a singer. I had to run away from home to follow my vocation. He believes that it is shameful to perform in public. Even if I became a big star, he wouldn't change his mind."

Unlike the simple country singer she was back then, living near the Nile and performing with her folk trio at the Addis Ababa National Theater, today Gigi is a New York resident whose Bill Laswell-produced album, Gigi (Palm Pictures), is the hottest thing from Ethiopia since Aster Aweke ruled Afrobeat in the early ྖs. Backed by a cast that includes Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Pharoah Sanders and Henry Threadgill, Gigi's debut is an alluring composite of her undulating Amharic vocals and unusual harmonies with exotic sounds and reggae/west African beats, which she calls Tsahay or "sun" music.

Breaking into an ear-tingling improvisation of fluttering vocal trills and scale-leaping squeals during an interview, Gigi sounds like an unusual bird with a giant heart full of soul.

"There are five different vocal modes in the Ethiopian style," she explains. "You can write millions of songs in one of those modes. It is in the way you phrase; it can sound like a modern song. And it makes the words sound differently. You can use the Bati mode, for instance, in so many styles. But you know when somebody is singing a happy song, they are singing about life. You communicate the sound. Even if you don't understand the lyrics of a song you understand the feeling; it is universal."

Singing of lost loves ("Zomaye"), family ("Nafeken"), war ("Adwa") or ancient rivers ("Abay"), Gigi's hot topics resonate with Ethiopian youth, who have made her a star. While western ears may find Gigi's music exotic and harmonically and melodically advanced, to her it is second nature. Writing purely with her voice, she eschews instruments for inner melody.

"I don't really think about writing songs, it just comes to me whenever I am inspired by something. I like to listen to different beats or I might be inspired by something I read, then I just sing the melody into my tape deck."

Gigi wears a large gold necklace, gold bracelets and a silver ring she won't discuss. Her long neck and resplendent mop of hair makes her look a bit like a queen. Walking down 8th Avenue an hour later, her regal bearing is reflected in her long gait-her prominent features drawing stares on a hot New York afternoon. Both dazzling and contemplative, Gigi's modern music reflects her ancient heritage: enticing, mysterious, compelling.

"For me, music is life," she says. "I am just trying to say whatever I feel, whatever I know, whatever I have experienced. And I love singing."