Norah Jones on her music, success and Ravishankar

A press note from SAJA,

MUSIC: Norah Jones on "60 Minutes"

As part of the rollout of her third album Norah Jones is going to be getting a lot of press. SAJAforum posted an item about a major NYT Sunday piece on Jan. 21, 2007, with lots of useful links, and she was the subject of a 12-minute segment on the top newsmagazine show, "60 Minutes," on CBS yesterday. The piece, called "The Humility of Norah Jones" featured sit-down interviews with correspondent Katie Couric (yes, she of "Evening News" fame), small snippets from concerts and lots of talking. And unlike most pieces by non-South Asians, they didn't shy away from the Ravi Shankar question.

Norah’s father is the famous musician, Ravi Shankar, the virtuoso Indian sitar player. "I knew who my dad was," she says. "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 says, was complicated and it ended when she was young. Her mother, she says, didn’t want her talking about him.

Jones acknowledges 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 says.

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 says, "Yeah. I might have. I might have wanted that."

Today she says they are close.

"Do you consider yourself part Indian?" Couric asks.

"I grew up in Texas with a white mother," Jones says. "I feel very Texan, actually and New York. New Yorker."

You can find the video clip of the interview on CBS-60minutes.
http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/i_video/main500251.shtml?id=2458909n