Gigi

"I'm a very traditional person inside - the way I write my words, my phrasing, the way I write the songs, that's me." "I'm a very traditional person inside - the way I write my words, my phrasing, the way I write the songs, that's me."

The roots within Gigi are firm. Even though the sound on Gigi, her debut for Palm, is very contemporary, the sense of Ethiopian history is strong, and "that's going to stay there," she insists. But tradition is just one part of the picture. With a rich sound that seamlessly mixes ancient and modern, courtesy of producer Bill Laswell, some top modern jazz luminaries, and the power of a major label, she's set to make a justified leap to major artist.

Still, it's been a long journey from the Horn of Africa to the big time. Gigi, 27, grew up in rural Ethiopia, weaned to traditional and church music, before moving to the capital, Addis Ababa, when she was 14. There her musical horizons broadened, hearing the local pop music "and all kinds of American music we could get on the radio. After that I went to Kenya, and there I was exposed to a lot of different African music, a different kind of beat."

"I'm a very traditional person inside - the way I write my words, my phrasing, the way I write the songs, that's me."

Returning home, she became a singer with the National Theatre before making her debut record, then working with a puppet company, which took her to France, which helped her develop the theatrics of live performance.

"When I was there I played at a world music festival called Imagineer," she recalls, winning the crowd with her voice and show. "There was a live recording, I returned to Ethiopia, and in 1997 got a visa to come to America. It's everybody's dream to come to America."

The New World offered a fresh challenge to the aspiring diva, and she grasped it eagerly, discovering jazz in Oakland, and hitting the road as a backup vocalist with countrywoman Aster Aweke, "my favorite singer."

She made another album, One Ethiopia, released on Barkhanns last year, before her manager brought her to the attention of Palm Pictures head honcho Chris Blackwell. Impressed by her previous work, Blackwell quickly signed her.

They agreed that she needed to do something different to be noticed, a major recording to put her on the map, and that led to putting Bill Laswell in the producer's chair. Working with him on her songs, Gigi found that "doing the music wasn't hard, everything was done in a very short time. But he made sure the vocals were the right performance. He helped me a lot in that."

While this new effort wouldn't be a jazz album, Laswell brought along some big-name guests, including Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, and Pharoah Sanders, who were working on Hancock's new disc. While, in Gigi's estimation, "the big band thing is over, and Ethiopian music is very influenced by that - a lot of brass, no harmony," Laswell saw the jazzmen as offering a twist on the older Ethiopian sound.

"The Ethiopian use of brass and horns comes from when their soldiers fought in the Korean War, and they were exposed to American big band jazz," Laswell explains. "Duke Ellington actually played in Ethiopia. So there's a jazz influence, and I thought it would be interesting to turn that around and incorporate artists who are more involved in modern and future jazz."

If there was one problem, it came in laying down Gigi's vocals.

"There's a lot of vibrato in Ethiopian vocals, and Bill wasn't really cool with that," the singer explains. "I had to do it again and again until I got it. Not everything is 100 percent the way I wanted it, but we worked really hard to make it like this."

"Live the vibrato helps project emotion, but in the studio there's so much more potential for experimentation," Laswell explains. "The melodic content is served better by being straighter and smoother."

Surprisingly, for all its modern feel, and ambient textures on tracks like "Bale Washintu," Gigi contains no loops or samples, Laswell says. "It's live drums and hand percussion that creates the feel of each track. There's live bass, everything's live." The results are quite individual, drawing not only on her diverse Ethiopian and East African musical experiences, but also pulling heavily from jazz and funk, all grounded by the gospel organ of Amita Myers, and topped by seductive layers of Gigi's vocals in the sibilant Ethiopian Amharic language to create a lush, accessible garden of music with very strong crossover potential.

With the record complete, Gigi faces another challenge - taking her music on the road for the first time as a headline act including a showcase at the prestigious WOMEX conference of world music professionals in Rotterdam, Holland. Replicating the record would be impossible, and she admits her live show will be "a little different. We need to push the sound a bit onstage. I'll put on some drum'n'bass, and the drums will be a bit different on five songs. Amita Myers is playing organ, which she did on the album, and I have tabla and percussion."

Out of Africa and ready to go on road, Gigi fully understands that this is her opportunity to break out. Sensing that there is no turning back, the urgency in her voice is palpable when she says, "I'm grateful for this chance, and I have to make it work."

Gigi

"I'm a very traditional person inside - the way I write my words, my phrasing, the way I write the songs, that's me."

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