COMMUNARDS disco diva with Don't Leave Me This Way, jazz chanteuse and Brechtian big band crooner, Sarah Jane Morris is never content to be pinned down.

She will be at Fibbers in York next Friday, performing songs from her latest album, last September's Bloody Rain. This time, the record is dedicated to the people of Africa, and the inspiring music of that continent, bringing together such guests as Senegalese kora player Seckou Keita, British-Caribbean saxophonist Courtney Pine, the Soweto Gospel Choir, Nigerian singer and prince Keziah Jones, American/ Israeli flugelhorn player Avishai Cohen and James Brown's arranger and co-writer Pee Wee Ellis.

These international musicians complement another international musician in Sarah Jane. "I do much better abroad than I do here," she says. "In my case, I had a pop career and then

I changed and you're not allowed to do that here, where people are very fussy, whereas in Italy and France they've always accepted change.

"People can be harder here but those who have supported me have been fantastic, helping me to do this album through a Pledge funding campaign, as I knew I needed special guests on the record."

Sarah Jane had raised sufficient funds to record an album from playing gigs, but she needed more to make the record she had in mind. "I'm a one-woman cottage industry running the record label myself," she says. "I even offered my gold disc to raise money but luckily I still have it as the Pledge campaign was very successful, raising 150 per cent of the money I required."

And so, the guest list on Bloody Rain took shape, including string arrangements by Enrico Melozzi in Rome, bringing even more to an album recorded with Sarah Jane's co-writer Tony Remy, Dominic Miller, Henry Thomas, Martyn Barker, Tim Cansfield and Adriano Adewale, who will form her band in York next Friday.

Meanwhile, Sarah Jane's album track Men Just Want To Have Fun is being used by the Terrence Higgins Trust and Annie Lennox’s Charity Sing as a campaign song: more global impact for a singular British talent.

Sarah Jane Morris plays Fibbers, York, on January 16, doors open at 7.30pm. Box office: fibbers.co.uk