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Indian
sitar maestro Ravi Shankar's American daughter Norah Jones says she and
her father are close today after years of estrangement, but she does
not consider herself part Indian.
"I
knew who my dad was," she told Katie Couric in a 12-minute piece on CBS
News "60 Minutes" Sunday. "I saw him sporadically until I was nine and
then I didn't see him again or talk to him until I was 18."
Shankar
never married her mother - their relationship, Norah said, was
complicated and it ended when she was young. Her mother, she said,
didn't want her talking about him.
Jones, 27, acknowledged it
was kind of a secret. "You know, when you have a father who's pretty
well known but you don't see him, the last thing you want to do is
start talking about him all the time to people," she said.
When Norah turned 18, she sought out her father, who was living in California with his daughter and second wife.
Asked
if she was angry or sought an apology from her father when they
reconnected, Jones said, "Yeah. I might have. I might have wanted
that." Today, she said they are close.
"Do you consider yourself
part Indian?" Couric asked. "I grew up in Texas with a white mother,"
Jones said. "I feel very Texan, actually a New Yorker."
Norah
Jones, who has sold over 30 million albums, more than any other female
artist this decade, told Couric that success makes her uncomfortable as
they talked about the 2003 Grammy Awards.
That evening Norah
Jones, then 23, won a total of eight Grammys with her first album of
romantic, dreamy ballads named "Best New Artist," "Record of the Year,"
and "Album of the Year."
But Jones said she felt really bad
about her sweep. "I felt like I went to somebody else's birthday party
and I ate all their cake. Without anybody else getting a piece. That's
how I felt."
A year later, her second album went on to sell 10
million copies, proving her success was no fluke. Unlike her earlier
albums, Norah Jones' just released third album, "Not Too Late" has all
the songs written by her and as such "they're more honest, more
personal and edgier."
"There's a little playfulness but there's
also a lot of darker material on this album," Jones said. "And that
comes less from me being a dark person than me sort of observing things
going on around me and sort of turning them into songs."
"My
Dear Country," which she wrote the day before the 2004 presidential
election, is a political protest song that takes a jab at President
George Bush.
Asked if she was nervous she'd face a fallout
similar to what the Dixie Chicks experienced, Jones said, "No. It's
more of a personal song for me. It's more of, it's just a song about
questioning what's going on and frustration. And I think that a lot of
people will, would be able to relate to that feeling, especially from
the past few years."
Norah said her musical roots are country
and jazz, tastes acquired growing up in Grapevine, Texas, listening to
her mother's eclectic record collection. An only child, she was raised
by a single mom, who sacrificed to give her daughter every opportunity.
Norah
Jones moved to Greenwich Village when she was 20 years old. "It's a
cool neighbourhood to live in. When I first moved here, I actually
moved to a little street called Jones Street," she remembered. She
waited tables and got gigs singing and playing Jazz standards in small
clubs.
In less than a year, her musical career took off when an
accountant for Blue Note Records came to hear her perform. She was
signed and put out her first album, which she hoped would ultimately
sell 10,000 copies. It sold over 20 million.
In 2005, she took
herself out of the spotlight and began performing in disguise. In one
performance, she donned a blonde wig, singing with the all-girl band,
"El Madmo."
"We wear wigs 'cause it's just fun. And we didn't
want anybody to judge us, you know. So we wanted to be more anonymous,"
Jones said. "We wanted to be able to just try something out for fun,
for the fun of music, you know. We ended up just enjoying the dressing
up part, as much as the band part."
Norah Jones said she doesn't know where her career will go from here and she doesn't really care.
"I
don't expect to sell millions of records every time. I just don't think
that's gonna be possible. I think that's a lucky thing that happens
every once in a while," she said. "I feel like I've had my cake and
I've eaten it and it tasted great. And I don't need another piece."
By Arun Kumar, Indo-Asian News Service
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