When most people think of folk music, they imagine acoustic guitars, harmonicas and maybe the odd banjo -- not turntables, string quartets, breakbeats, church organs, soccer anthems and tablas.

But Nelly Furtado is not most people; she's an open-minded musical mixmaster with a palette that includes all kinds of music from all over the world.

So when the 24-year-old Portuguese-Canadian hip-hop folksinger started working on the followup to her multi-platinum, Grammy-winning debut album, Whoa, Nelly! last year, she decided to incorporate all the sounds that make her who she is, and call it Folklore, out Nov. 25.

"To me, folklore is just the idea of anyone, anywhere in the world, picking up what they have around them -- a guitar, a cooking pot, a turntable, whatever -- making music and talking about what's going on around them," she says. "I like how all-encompassing the title is. There's folk music all over the world. If you look at my CD collection, I'd say 40% is sung in another language, so I feel like a citizen of the world. Even hip-hop is folk; that's why it's so popular."

So Folklore includes the sounds of Furtado's ancestral roots on the Portuguese Azores Islands, as well as those of her Canadian upbringing in British Columbia and Toronto. It's a fascinating combination of mainstream pop melodies, Brazilian rhythms, Portuguese fado, hip-hop grooves, church music, acoustic folk and funk.

The album was also heavily influenced by the fact that Furtado, who gave birth to her first child, Nevis, in September, wrote and produced most of the album while she was pregnant.

"I think only one song dates from before the pregnancy," she says. "Most of them we wrote on the spot. In fact, virtually everything you hear was written, mixed and mastered in probably 12 weeks, which was cool. It's a spontaneous record with real emotions.

"The thing about pregnancy is that it puts you in a different emotional state. You're a lot more mellow and grounded and preoccupied, and the music comes more easily 'cause you've got your perspective in order. Plus, your diaphragm moves, so you can sing a lot lower. On the last album I was singing a lot in a nasally tone, but on this one I think I show more range."

The subject matter and lyrics also show a progression from Whoa, Nelly!'s youthful exuberance. With a baby, a boyfriend (her DJ, Lil Jaz) and a career all helping to ground her, Furtado is no longer like a bird, as her relentlessly popular first single claimed.

Consequently, a lot of the songs on Folklore refer to her maturation as both a person and an artist -- such as One-Trick Pony, Powerless and Try. Meanwhile, several others -- like Fresh Off The Boat, Island Of Wonder, Saturdays and Picture Perfect -- refer to the immigrant experience.

"The lyrics on this record are important to me," she says. "They're more edgy and insightful this time. They could be about my own life or another person's life. Like Picture Perfect, which is about looking at my parents' photo albums and seeing pictures of my father when he first came to Canada and how perfect everything looked. And that's folklore -- it's my idea of what it was like then."

Furtado was only 20 when Whoa, Nelly! came out in 2000 -- and she says she still has no explanation as to why it took off the way it did, going multi-platinum around the world and winning Junos, Grammys and numerous other awards for its astonished creator.

"I have no idea, 'cause that's a weirdo album," she laughs. "I was listening to it about a month ago when I was finishing the new record, and I thought, 'This album's weird. How come five million people bought it? I don't get it.' It's so strange. It's like a really quirky album. But I'm proud of us for being able to push that into the mainstream and have people pick up on it.

"Obviously, it helped to have some catchy songs like I'm Like A Bird on it, but I don't know why it connected. I think maybe it was because I was bringing all these eclectic influences together in a mainstream way. I like to make songs that are catchy and have that accessibility, but at the same time I also like to bring something new -- teaching you something about music or culture or whatever."

Of course, Furtado's facility with the Spanish and Portuguese languages -- although not, contrary to popular opinion, Hindi -- also facilitates her acceptance in Europe, Latin America and Brazil. "Yeah, I'm really well-received in Mexico, because they see me as Latin," she says. "That's probably how I got into Brazilian music -- it's obviously easier if you understand the language."

Furtado, who has previously collaborated with Missy Elliott, Paul Oakenfold, The Roots, Jurassic 5 and Swollen Members, got Brazilian singer Caetano Veloso and banjo star Bela Fleck to contribute to Folklore.

"Caetano Veloso is like my idol," she says. "I had to talk to him on the phone briefly to explain what I wanted him to do, and I put it off for a whole day because I was so nervous, I was shaking. It was insane. But he loved the song, and now it's there and I can enjoy it."

Fleck, who was contacted by co-producer Brian West when he was in town for the Toronto Blues Festival in July, plays banjo on Forca, which Furtado says is "probably" going to be the Portuguese soccer anthem for the European Cup in Lisbon.

"They asked me to write a theme song for the team," she says proudly. "Forca means kickass, go for it, woo-hoo! -- that kind of thing. Soccer's a beautiful game, and there's a romantic nature to it that I wanted to capture.

"And I really wanted to put a banjo on this record. I think it's been underused in pop music for a while, and it's a folk instrument and the album's called Folklore, so what better thing to do than get a banjo?

"It's funny -- I like the idea that I'm this first-generation immigrant girl taking this Americana instrument and putting it in my funny, eclectic music. It's kind of saying that we all have our culture; you don't have to be from somewhere exotic."