Jagoda, Flory, 1923-2021

<p>Flory Jagoda (born Flora Papo; December 21, 1923 – January 29, 2021) was a Bosnian Jewish–born American guitarist, composer and singer-songwriter. She was known for her composition and interpretation of Sephardic songs, Judeo-Espanyol (Ladino) songs and the Bosnian folk ballads, sevdalinka.</p>

<p>Flory Jagoda was born Flora Papo on December 21, 1923, to a Bosnian Jewish family. She grew up in the Bosnian towns of Vlasenica and her birth city of Sarajevo. She was raised in the Sephardic tradition in the musical Altarac family. Her mother, Rosa Altarac left her first husband and returned to the town of Vlasenica. There she met and married Michael Kabilio, and they settled in Zagreb, Croatia, where Kabilio owned a tie-making business.</p>

<p>When the Nazis invaded Yugoslavia in April 1941, her step-father (whom Flory referred to as her father) put 16-year-old Flory on a train to Split using false identity papers and removing the Jewish star from her coat. On the train she played her accordion ("hamoniku" in Serbo-Croatian) all the way to Split (at that time controlled by the Italians), with other passengers and even the conductor singing along; she was never asked for her ticket. Her parents joined her in Split several days later, and after a brief sojourn there they and other Jews who had escaped the Nazis were moved to various islands off the Croatian coast. Flory and her parents were sent to the island of Korčula, where they lived until fall 1943. Following the Italian capitulation, Jews on Korcula left by fishing boats for Bari, Italy, which had recently been liberated by the British army. While in Italy, she met and fell in love with an American soldier named Harry Jagoda. She arrived in the United States as a war bride in 1946, going first to Harry's hometown of Youngstown, Ohio, and later moving to Northern Virginia.</p>

<p>The Sephardic community of Sarajevo and its surrounding communities were nearly obliterated during World War II.</p>
<p>Ladino, or Judeo-Espanyol, the language of the Sephardim, is in danger of extinction, but it is experiencing a minor revival among Sephardic communities, especially in music. Jagoda was a leader in this revival.</p>
<p>In 2002, Jagoda received a National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts for her efforts in passing on the tradition of Sephardic songs sung in Ladino. In 2002, Ankica Petrovic produced a documentary film about her life. In the fall of 2013, a gala celebration concert honoring Flory's 90th birthday was held in Coolidge Auditorium at the Library of Congress. Jagoda was joined on stage by more than twenty of her students, colleagues, and family members. The concert was filmed by JEMGLO, which used portions of the concert interspersed with interviews with Jagoda, her family members, and several of her disciples and musical colleagues for the documentary Flory's Flame. Her music is known and sung by many musicians around the world, but especially by her apprentice, Susan Gaeta, as a soloist and with Trio Sefardi (with Tina Chancey and Howard Bass), and by her student, Aviva Chernick.</p>

<p>Flory and her husband, Harry Jagoda, had four children. In later life, Jagoda developed dementia and was unable to sing. Flory Jagoda died age 97 on January 29, 2021.</p>

<p>Flory Jagoda, a Bosnian-born guitarist and accordionist who brought the traditional ballads of her Sephardic ancestors and the melodies of the Ladino language to American audiences through performances and recordings, died Jan. 29 at a memory-care center in Alexandria, Va. She was 97.</p>

<p>The cause was complications of dementia, said her daughter Lori Lowell.</p>

<p>In an early life marked by war, persecution and dislocation, Mrs. Jagoda said she found comfort in her heritage and the teachings passed down by her maternal grandmother — her nona — in the mountain village of Vlasenica.</p>

<p>In addition to Sephardic Jewish culture, her nona taught her the centuries-old Ladino language, now a rarely spoken Castilian Spanish dialect. She also passed on the legend of “La Yave,” the metaphorical key guarded by Sephardim that would one day allow them to return to their ancestral homes after being expelled from the Iberian Peninsula in 1492 by order of Spain’s Catholic monarchs.</p><p>
After surviving an internment camp during the Holocaust, Mrs. Jagoda married an American soldier and settled in Northern Virginia in the 1940s. Calling upon her memories of her nona, as well as her considerable musical skill, she became a preeminent flame-keeper of the Ladino language.</p>

<p>Starting in the 1960s, she and a circle of musical friends began hosting lamb roasts and other gatherings where they sang traditional Ladino music. Over the years, she became a regular at local folk festivals, eventually touring the United States and Europe. She recorded five albums, released her own songbook and composed a Hanukkah song, “Ocho Kandelikas” (“Eight Little Candles”), that was recorded by singers including Idina Menzel</p>

<p>In recognition of her contributions to Sephardic music, the National Endowment for the Arts named her a National Heritage Fellow in 2002. She was the subject of the documentaries “The Key From Spain” (2002) and “Flory’s Flame” (2014).</p>


<p>Gerard Edery, a Moroccan-born guitarist and expert in Sephardic music, noted the “simplicity and honesty” of Mrs. Jagoda’s music. “She was looking to pass on the tradition, as it were, almost more from an ethnomusicological place, even though she herself was just singing the songs of her childhood,” he said.</p>

<p>“I perform with a mostly very oriental Bosnian style because that’s how my nona sang,” Mrs. Jagoda told the NEA in 2002. “A lot of trills, lots of embellishments.”</p>

<p>Flora Papo was born Dec. 21, 1923, in Sarajevo, where her father was a nightclub musician. After her parents divorced, Flora lived with her mother and mother’s family in Vlasenica, and she later took the surname of her stepfather (Kabilio).</p>

<p>She moved with her mother and stepfather to Croatia and had several years of musical and dance training in Zagreb. Her stepfather bought her a harmoniku, or accordion, that she played with such fervor that she considered the instrument a friend, she recalled to the Jewish Women’s Archive.</p>


<p>Her life became one of harrowing uncertainty after the Nazi invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941. Using fabricated documents provided by her stepfather — and a non-Jewish name — she left Zagreb by train bound for the Adriatic seaport city of Split, which was then occupied by Italy.</p>

<p>Carrying a single suitcase and her harmoniku, she entertained fellow passengers by playing Serbo-Croatian melodies. “My father said, ‘Don’t talk. Just play the accordion,’ ” she later told The Washington Post. “I played it from Zagreb to Split. That little accordion, which I still have, saved my life.” (The conductor was so charmed, she recalled, that he neglected to ask for her papers.)</p>

<p>She was soon reunited with her parents in Split, and later that same year they were sent by the Italians with hundreds of other Jews to an internment camp on the Adriatic island of Korcula. They spent two years on the island, until being released in 1943, and from there she made her way to Bari, Italy.</p>


<p>Of more than 82,000 Yugoslav Jews, an estimated 15,000 survived the war, according to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. More than 40 members of her family perished.</p>

<p>After the war, she found work as a translator helping the Americans at a salvage depot in Bari. There she met an Army sergeant, Harry Jagoda, whom she married in 1945, fashioning a wedding dress from the silk of a parachute.</p>

<p>He left for the United States that December, and she followed a few months later on a Red Cross ship ferrying hundreds of Italian war brides. Her parents joined them two years later.</p>

<p>Mrs. Jagoda’s husband, who became a commercial and residential builder and served as a bank director, died in 2014. Their son Elliot Jagoda also died that year. In addition to her daughter Lori, of Woodbridge, Va., survivors include two children, Betty Murphy of Verona, N.J., and Andy Jagoda of New York City; six grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.</p>


<p>In her later years, Mrs. Jagoda convened Vijitas de Alhad, or “Sundays visits,” as weekly celebrations of Sephardic stories, songs and cuisine. Participants, who included immigrants from Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey, met at homes and sang in Ladino.</p>

<p>“I write Sephardic songs to continue my family tradition,” Mrs. Jagoda told The Post in 2002. “During the war, 42 people in my family were all thrown into a mass grave. In their memory, I write songs about them, about holidays, about the legend of the key, the key they carried from Spain.”</p>

Flory Jagoda (born Florica Kabilio) is the daughter of Samuel and Rosa (Altarac) Papo. She was born December 21, 1923 in Sarajevo. Shortly after her birth, Florica's mother left her husband and returned to her parents, Sumbul and Berta Altarac, who were Sephardic musicians in the town of Vlasenica. In 1930 Florica's mother married Michael Kabilio and moved to Zagreb, leaving Florica in Vlasenica with her grandparents. Two years later, after Michael legally adopted Florica, she joined her mother and stepfather in Zagreb. During the separation her parents had established a prosperous tie factory and given up religious observance, Sephardic customs and the Ladino language. It took Florica some time to adapt to her new surroundings and lifestyle, but she soon was integrated into her public school. She also began formal music training and soon became an accomplished accordion player. In 1941 following the establishment of the Independent State of Croatia, Florica was expelled from school and forced to wear a Jewish badge. Her music teacher also refused to see her. As conditions worsened in Zagreb, Michael sought the help of a childhood friend to get the family train tickets to Split in Italian-occupied Yugoslavia. Florica traveled first and managed to avoid suspicion by playing her accordion for other passengers in her compartment. Her parents joined her eight days later. They lived in Split for several months until the Italians evacuated the Jewish population to the island of Korcula in the Adriatic Sea. Korcula provided a safe haven until the Italian surrender of July 25, 1943 and the subsequent occupation of Italian-held territories by German troops. Florica and her mother escaped by tugboat to the Italian mainland. Traveling at night, they reached Italy in two days and settled in Bari. Michael, who had been in Split at the time of their escape, joined them several weeks later. In Bari, Florica found work with the U.S. army and soon made the acquaintance of an American Jewish sergeant by the name of Harry Jagoda. The two were married on June 24, 1945. Harry returned to the U.S. soon after the war, but Florica had to wait until June 1946 to secure the necessary immigration papers. The day before she left Italy Florica's mother received a letter from her brother, Lezo Altarac. In it he described the attack of May 1941, when the Jews of Vlasenica were rounded-up and locked in a barn. They were then shot one by one by local Muslims operating under German command and their bodies dumped into a ravine. Lezo escaped through a board he had loosened the night before. He was the only member of his family to survive the massacre.