MILAN, Italy -- Though she has been labeled as a folkie and doesn't necessarily dismiss the idea, Ani DiFranco is growing concerned about her role as a modern folk-singer in the grand scheme of things.

"I think (that role) is very much what it always was," the 28-year-old Buffalo, N.Y.-based songwriter said on a recent tour of her father's homeland. "Folk singers made community-based music that speaks about what's going on in that community. I'm not a traditional folk-singer. I don't play union songs -- you know, 'there's power in a union' -- and about going off to war. I think more about my personal experience. But there's the same mentality, the same idea to speak about my society, my community."

DiFranco's "community" is, literally, all over the map these days, as she pushes her music out across the waters to the ears of millions of new listeners. Now that feisty, modern folk-singer DiFranco has made something of a name for herself at home in America, she's out to try and do the same overseas, where she recently toured. (ATN's April feature story will be a profile of the multifaceted singer/songwriter.)

And in the middle of all the media attention is DiFranco, taking notes and putting her own personal experience into her songs. "(I'm) the 1990s; New York; young; female. That's my folk, where my information comes from. But what I find also really interesting is that if you are honest about your experience, if I talk about love or if I talk about power in relationships in my life, other different kind of people have shared experiences. Even though I talk about my life, I think that people who come from a different place, different sex or different age [can relate]. There's a lot in common, you know. [It's] the human experience."

While DiFranco has issued 10 albums in the U.S. on her own Righteous Babe Records label, her latest, Little Plastic Castle, is the first to be released in her ancestral country. (Her father comes from a town near Rome.) With her new material ready for the stage, including the new album's ti tle song (RealAudio excerpt), DiFranco journeyed to Italy recently to promote her latest work and to generally spread the word about her music ... and herself.

After a showcase performance at Milan's Propaganda Theater, DiFranco, dressed down in a pair of blue jeans and a black cotton vest, held an impromptu backstage press conference. The next day, she met with SonicNet Music News to discuss what she's about, what she's up to, where she's been and where she's going. She has been compared to many artists, but she's quick to note that her style of guitar-playing and music-making was mostly picked up along the way. "When you play in clubs, you have to develop survival skills," she said. "You have to get people to shut up and turn around. I think that my playing was influenced by years of playing in clubs. I sort-of started my own style when I was younger. I didn't really listen to other acoustic-guitar players. After a while people started to say, 'Do you listen to Michael Hedges?', and then I went back and I started to listen to other people. But I think that while I was growing up, I was just going on my instincts."

While DiFranco denies having any musical heroes, she does acknowledge being a huge fan of American folk-legend Woody Guthrie. In fact, her record label will release a Guthrie tribute album that will include performances by folk- inspired rockers Bruce Springsteen, Billy Bragg, Indigo Girls, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Pete Seeger and others.

"Woody, he was just an amazing writer," she said. "His songs sound very tiny, very folkie-hokey. But if you really listen, if you really get into the mindset and into the time and place he was working in, his writing is incredible. He was one of those who invented the idea of music as political."

And while she sees how her musical style can be traced to Guthrie, she said she's not as clear on any relationship between her sound and Guthrie's most famous disciple. "I don't think I was directly influenced by Bob Dylan," DiFranco said. "I think that Bob Dylan was directly influenced by Woody Guthrie. I think I was very influenced by Woody Guthrie. We have different ways of following him and his footsteps."

It's not that she doesn't respect his work. It's just that she sees their musical careers and styles as coming from very different personalities and generations.

"He's a very solitary man," she said of Dylan, for whom she has opened several concerts. "He pulls up in his bus, just before he goes on; then, he gets off. He plays, and then he gets on the bus and drives away when people are still clapping. We talked a few times, and he's very nice. He's been so important in certain things in the singer/songwriter culture. But he was a little before my time."

(Correspondent Claudio Todesco contributed to this report.)