Norah Jones has said that she might have wanted an apology from her father, sitarist Ravi Shankar, for not being there with her during her childhood.
When asked in an interview on a US television programme if she was angry or had wanted an apology from Shankar when she got older, the best-selling jazz musician said, “Yeah. I might have. I might have wanted that.”
Shankar and her mother were never married, despite a relationship that Jones described as “complicated” in the programme, 60 Minutes, on Sunday. Shankar left her mother and did not see his daughter for most of her early years.
Jones and her mother kept the fact that Shankar was her biological father to themselves during her childhood. Though Jones knew who her father was, she said in the interview, “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.”
Born Geethali Norah Jones Shankar, she dropped the first and last parts of the name when she turned 16.
“I saw him sporadically until I was nine and then I didn’t see him again or talk to him until I was 18,” said Jones, who has just released her third album Not Too Late. Even then, she was the one who sought out Shankar who at that point was living in California with his other daughter, Anoushka, and his second wife.
{{/usCountry}}“I saw him sporadically until I was nine and then I didn’t see him again or talk to him until I was 18,” said Jones, who has just released her third album Not Too Late. Even then, she was the one who sought out Shankar who at that point was living in California with his other daughter, Anoushka, and his second wife.
{{/usCountry}}Jones does not consider herself Indian. She said: “I grew up in Texas with a white mother. I feel very Texan, actually, and New York — New Yorker.”
Email Pramit Pal Chaudhuri: pramitpc@yahoo.com