Everyone appreciates a jazz vocalist who takes risks, and there's plenty of the latter on Jumoké Fashola's excellent debut album, The Condition of Being A Woman. Running the monthly spoken-word and jazz series at Ronnie's, Jazz Verse Jukebox, the singer's penchant for poetry is well known. And her bringing together of Senegalese poet Birago Diop's ‘Breaths’ with Wayne Shorter's ‘Footprints’ is a real coup de théâtre. Then there's the self-penned ‘Recession Blues’, a lament for hard times (‘Once it was Waitrose and Sainsbury's now it's Lidl and Primark’). Also powerfully done is the Yoruba praise song intro to ‘Afro Blue’, in honour of the singer's mother who used to greet her with just such an ‘Oriki’. Jumoké also has great fun with Alberta Hunter's ‘Rough And Ready Man’ and Cole Porter's ‘My Heart Belongs To Daddy’. The singer surrounds herself with a first-rate band, with Simon Wallace a key presence on piano and Rhodes (also contributing the wonderful ‘The Girl You Can't Forget’, co-written with Fran Landesman), while Richard Olatundé Baker's nuanced talking drum and percussion work adds greatly to the textural interest.