by Aaron Leibel, Arts Editor
Washington Jewish Week
Wednesday, December 14, 2005

Two decades ago, Flory Jagoda conducted a workshop on Ladino music and was asked if that was "Jewish music".

But after a lifetime dedicated to trying to preserve the songs of her native Bosnia and Sephardic music in general, Jagoda, 82, has witnessed a remarkable turnaround in popular perceptions.

"It is in now and accepted as Jewish music after all those years of hard work", says the Alexandria resident.

Last Sunday, she and Cantor Ramon Tasat performed songs from their new album “Kantikas de amor i vida” (Songs of Love and Life) in a concert at Tasat's synagogue, Temple Shalom in Chevy Chase.

The Holocaust survivor ¬–who in 2002 received a $10,000 National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts– she often sings "Buena Semana" ("Good Week"), traditionally sung in concluding Havdalah, in concerts.

"Audiences now sing along with me, and believe me, that didn't happen before", says Jagoda, who was born in Sarajevo in 1923 and has made the Washington area home since 1948. "Now, people know what I am talking about and what I am singing”.

Tasat, who has known Jagoda for more than 10 years, terms Jagoda's contribution to preserving Sephardic music in America "enormous".

"When Flory arrived after the war, Sephardic music was nonexistent", says the cantor, who was born in Buenos Aires. "Especially in the Jewish community, the perception was that only music from Eastern Europe was Jewish music.”

"Through the years, she single-handedly began reversing this paradigm." The singer, he says, made Sephardic music accessible with songs that allowed her audiences to sing along, as well as by "telling stories that let people connect with the music and by composing music that has become part of the Jewish repertoire."

The catalyst for their new CD was a concert at the University of Maryland a few years ago, he says.

The two performed as part of an ensemble, but did one song together. "A Post critic pointed out how beautiful the interaction between us was in the duet", the cantor recalls.

That sparked the idea for a CD of songs they could sing as duets. "She found songs that allowed us to sing together", he says. "Some are traditional Sephardic songs, but we sing them as she learned them in Sarajevo."

Some of the works are indigenous to the Sarajevo area while others are songs that Jagoda composed, he says.

Some deal with difficult subjects. One focuses on a young, pregnant woman, who is abandoned by the father of the child. Because of society's rejection, she decides to enter a convent with her son.

Another tells the story of a young man who is disappointed in love and worries that he won't have a beloved to mourn him after he dies.
Jagoda has recorded three previous CDs (Kantikas Di Mi Nona-Songs of My Grandmother, which began as a record and also was a cassette; Memories of Sarajevo; and La Nona Kanta -The Grandmother Sings). She also has to her credit a songbook (The Flory Jagoda Songbook) and documentary film (The Key from Spain).

Concerned about the preservation of the ancient Ladino songs she learned from her grandmother as a child in prewar Bosnia, Jagoda speaks with satisfaction about her musical "apprentice".

Shortly after she received the fellowship, the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities contacted her and asked her to be a "master" to an apprentice, Susan Gaeta.

Gaeta was with her for more than a year, and today, Jagoda says, is teaching and giving concerts, using her mentor's material and billing herself as "Flory Jagoda's apprentice".

Tasat also will help preserve her music. "He learned these songs from me, and he is also continuing my work", she says.

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