Talking Jazz

Sign up to Roisin O’Connor’s free weekly newsletter Now Hear This for the inside track on all things music Get our Now Hear This email for free Get our Now Hear This email for free SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy policy It felt perilously close to man-the-barricades time recently, when I caught sight of one of the new songbirds currently en vogue, Katie Melua, being described as a "jazz singer". The appearance of Dolly Parton on Norah Jones's new album surely removes any suggestion that Jones should be considered a purely jazz singer, and points to the truth that was always evident: that her sympathies lie as much with that abomination known as country music. There is clearly a yearning for old-fashioned melody, one that cannot be satisfied by rap, a genre that, for all its strengths, seems to be so incapable of producing anyone who can pen a tune that it must constantly raid the back catalogues of Stevie Wonder, Roy Ayers and even Boney M to provide musical substance to go with the rhythms of speech. Shorter and his old colleague Herbie Hancock have both shown themselves to be incorrigible noodlers in recent London appearances, and I fear that I may have put one friend off jazz for life by taking him to see the pair in concert a couple of years ago.