Gaby Amarantos is a singer and dancer from the city of Belém, in the northern state of Pará and comes from a family of Samba dancers. She's recorded a few CDs, a DVD, has been featured in newspapers and magazines and has made several appearances on Brazilian television shows.

Her music sounds like a mashup of 90s Euro rave, moombahton, cumbia, and the kind of Hispanic electro-pop you hear in discos on holiday when you're out of your mind on budget cocktails. Like Gloria Estefan with techno knobs on – or rather, Glozzer in a clinch with Technotronic.

In Brazil, it has its own genre name – "tecnobrega" – which literally translates as "techno-naff", and is a modern electronic version of the sort of tacky romantic music that has been big in the north of Brazil since the 70s.

Gaby, who in her 15-year semi-professional career as a singer used to sell cheap copies of her own music in the street as cars waited at red lights, references the cannibalistic nature of the brega legacy in her shows, doing high-energy covers from "Funkytown" to Kraftwerk.

Indeed, she was helped in garnering national attention by a performance of someone else's brega cover of Beyonce's "Single Ladies."But on her upcoming CD "Treme" (the name of the dance her fans do, after the Portuguese word "tremer," to shake), all of the flirty, party-oriented music is legal, and she is now performing for an entirely different set of crowds around the country, including São Paulo's trendy urban taste makers.

The singer, 33, recently hosted an annual party for Vogue Brasil, since she is known as a trendsetter for over-the-top stage outfits.