I'll never be close to dad

Two years ago she was still ekeing out a living as a waitress and writing and performing jazz songs in her spare time. Last month, Norah Jones looked genuinely flabbergasted when she scooped eight Grammys, including the coveted awards for Best Pop Vocalist and Best Newcomer.But the 23-year-old jazz ingénue's Grammys victory is tinged with sadness.

Beneath the serene smile lies the angst of her years of estrangement from her famous father, 82-year-old sitar legend Ravi Shankar. Tellingly, she didn't thank her dad during her Grammys acceptance speech. Neither did she acknowledge him on the liner notes of her debut album, Come Away With Me.

"It wouldn't be appropriate to thank him," says Jones, when we meet for our exclusive interview in a cluttered conference room in the Manhattan offices of Blue Note, her record label. "It's only in the past couple of years that my dad and I have even had a relationship. You've got to understand that my dad and I only talk once every few months on the phone. And I only see him about once a year. I mean, I'm not incredibly close to him. We are as close as we can be, considering."

Her rich, lilting voice trails off and she looks pained. "And it's not as if I am saying thanks to my grandmother either on the CD or at the Grammys. And I am close to her," she continues, leaping to Shankar's defence. "I love my dad, you know, and we've gotten a lot closer in the past few years. But it still wouldn't be appropriate to make a big deal out of the fact that I have a famous dad. I didn't want to do that. People took it really personally, like I snubbed my dad or something, but that's bullshit!" she taps my arm, smiles sheepishly and apologises for swearing, before continuing.

"I think my dad is a brilliant musician, but our music has nothing to do with each other and I don't feel comfortable with the headline 'Daughter of Ravi Shankar, Norah Jones'.

"I mean, I'm closer to my mother, Sue, than any other human being," she says. "But I wouldn't want to be known as 'Sue Jones's daughter' for my music, either. My dad knows I love him and it's unfortunate that so much stuff has been written about me snubbing him, because it really hurts his feelings."

Jones grew up in a suburb of Dallas with her mother - a nurse who once worked as a dancer. "My mom has always been there for me," she says. Shankar, on the other hand, has never been there for her. The sitar player, known for his extensive work with The Beatles - George Harrison dubbed him the Godfather of World Music - was an elusive figure during her childhood.

As a little girl, Jones saw him only a couple of times a year. When she turned nine, he disappeared from her life entirely, resurfacing when she was 18. "I grew up as an only child," she says wistfully. "My mom made a lot of sacrifices early on in my life to make sure I got to do what I wanted to do. She used to be a concert promoter. I think that's how she met my dad, but I never saw him hardly at all. It was just me and my mom."

Although Jones has forgiven her father for his neglect, she feels disconnected from the Indian side of her heritage. "I've been to India, but I am not really involved at all," she says.

"I'm close to my half-sister Anoushka [Shankar's 21-year-old daughter, who is also a sitar virtuoso] and she is very Indian, but I haven't really taken an interest in the country. Maybe some day I will study it more, but I didn't grow up around Indian culture at all [her mother is white] so it's not, like, inside me."

Before our interview, her publicist had warned me not to mention her father, but Jones is remarkably open about their unorthodox relationship. She is also very funny in a shy, selfdeprecating way, answering questions with a nervous giggle and sharing amusing anecdotes in a husky, conspiratorial whisper. But it's glaringly obvious when you meet her that she has no idea quite how famous or pretty she is.

I first encounter her wandering around the Blue Note offices alone, looking slightly lost and dressed unobtrusively in spectacles, black trousers and cardigan, brown cotton top and clumpy black-and-brown shoes. There is no entourage and no pretension. She is pretty in a low-key kind of way - long, tousled black hair, perfect make-up-free skin, full lips and searching dark eyes.

"I don't know why everybody is so interested in me," she says, looking genuinely puzzled. Jones just doesn't "get it" when journalists pursue her and fans obsess over her. Two days after her Grammys success, the New York Post ran a picture of her flat on its front page, beneath the headline: "Grammy Queen Norah's $1,400 Brooklyn Digs".

The article revealed that despite having sold seven million records, Jones still lives in a cramped, student-style shared flat in Williamsburg, a trendy but grungy enclave of Brooklyn - her share of the rent is about £300 a week.

"It's very scary when they publish a picture of your apartment on the front of the New York Post," she says. "I'm gonna have to move, now. My flatmate saw people camping outside the other day. I don't know what all the fuss is about. What's the big deal about me? There's a war about to happen. Why don't these people go and report on that and leave me alone. Jesus!"

Jones just wants to get on with making her music and hanging out with her boyfriend, bassist Lee Alexander, 33 (the pair met three years ago when Jones hired him to play at a jazz brunch). He is "just as weirded out" as her about her Grammy success.

With trademark understatement, Jones describes her CD, Come Away With Me, as "my mood little record". Actually, her "little record" with its delicate melodies and sultry, honeyed vocals is the perfect antidote to the overly manufactured pop that now dominates the music charts. It is a gentle, haunting blend of genres, merging jazz with pop, folk and blues. It's also the best-selling album her label has ever had.

"I may be genetically predisposed to play music," she says, referring to her father again. "And, I guess, I thought we had a good chance at one or two Grammys, but I didn't think that we would get all of them. I mean, I can't believe The Grammys were not the first awards Jones has received. Last year she won a VH-1 Award for Best New Artist. While at the Booker T Washington Performing Arts School in Texas she was voted Best Jazz Musician for two years running.

Jones grew up listening to blues and old soul and says she was more inspired by Billie Holiday than Madonna. Even today, she doesn't listen to pop music and is blissfully ignorant of the work of her contemporaries. She developed a taste for jazz when her mother took her to a concert when she was 13.

After a stint studying piano at the University of North Texas, Jones dropped out to move to New York and try to make a name for herself playing jazz clubs and bars. In 2000, an accountant from Blue Note saw one of her sets and invited her into the offices to perform in front of the label head.

She was promptly signed and her debut album was released last year. Then, incredibly, she complained to the head of her record label that her music was being "over-played" on the radio and she was becoming too famous, and asked him to stop promoting her.

"I think my career has been going too fast sometimes," she sighs. "This year has been crazy. I've learned that when I start to feel overwhelmed I definitely need to stand back and say, 'Wait, maybe this is kind of going too far.'

"The record's filled with simple songs and it's really mellow and quiet," she continues. "Probably more so than I intended. But this was my first attempt at being me."

Being her, also includes shunning glitz and glamour. She laughs at the likes of J-Lo and her so-called "Jen Commandments". "I won't be demanding any green M&Ms or special sheets. I'm surrounded by unpretentious people. But the record industry has gotten so into image that it's become more important than the singer.

"Everyone seems to go for the fast buck," she says. "There are things I won't wear - like you'd never see me in a mini skirt. And I won't wear spaghetti straps either, because I don't like my arms." She peels open her cardigan to show me. I can see nothing wrong with them.

"They're not that bad," she concedes. "But I just don't feel comfortable showing them. I'm lucky because my record label doesn't tell me what to wear - it is a jazz label, after all. Nobody here would want me to look like a 'ho'."

So what's next for the reluctant jazz diva? "I'm dying to record a new album," she says, her chocolaty brown eyes lighting up. "We have some new songs and we sound a lot different than we do on the first record. I'm ready to move on. I feel I have a long way to go yet.

"I've got no idea why I made it," she adds, almost as an after-thought. "There's, like, 10 other people I know in Brooklyn who are as good, if not better, than me. I guess it's about luck and timing. I always knew I'd be a musician, but I never thought it would be like this."