They were scattered across the globe in the 15th century, driven by the Inquisition from their homeland in Spain. Much like those ancestors who fled persecution, Flory Jagoda and her family found themselves packing up their Sephardic heritage and moving to America to escape the horrors of the Holocaust in the 1940s.
With Jagoda's grandmother's instruction, songs began to spill out of her, flowing from memories of relatives lost, and the joys and triumphs of her life on three continents. Now in Alexandria, Jagoda has developed a partnership with a Burke woman who she believes can write a new chapter in the centuries-old story of the music of the Sephardic Jews.
"She’s looking to me, I think, to carry this on, which is a huge responsibility. But I feel totally honored and I know I can do it. I want to help keep the music alive," said Susan Gaeta.
Gaeta, a teacher and singer living in Burke, has embarked on a three-year journey beginning in 2002 to learn from Jagoda and internalize the history, culture and heritage of the Sephardic people — a once-flourishing community of Jews on the Iberian peninsula in Spain and Portugal — and their native language of Ladino, a mix of Spanish and Hebrew.
The culmination of that journey will be an album of 10 songs to be released this fall. Titled "From Her Nona’s Drawer," the album will trace Gaeta’s personal connection with the music, which Jagoda hopes will be able to give new life to old music.
"I think our partnership, if that’s what you want to call it, was very successful, because I was able to transfer this feeling, nostalgia, soul, all that goes with this type of singing," said Jagoda. "It’s very emotional, very sentimental, and only a person who feels that kind of music can go on and teach it and perform it. I’m sure she will do that."
Gaeta will perform a free concert also titled "From Her Nona’s Drawer," on Sunday, June 26, at 7 p.m., at Adat Shalom Reconstructionist Congregation in Bethesda, Md.
THE "NONA" named in both album and concert refers to Jagoda’s grandmother, who kept copies of traditional Sephardic folk songs in a drawer in her house for safekeeping. She passed the songs down to Jagoda while they were living in Jagoda’s hometown near Sarajevo, Yugoslavia. Jagoda and her family fled the Fascist regime during World War II. Of the nearly four dozen members of her family who lived there, only four survived. Jagoda herself was able to survive when her parents removed her Star of David — which identified her as a Jew — and put her on a train to Italy as the Fascist regime closed in on Sarajevo.
"They said just sing and play your accordion. She sang the whole time and the people in the car sang, and the conductor didn’t ask her for a ticket," said Gaeta. Jagoda and her parents were reunited in Italy, where Jagoda met an American military officer. That was her ticket to America, where she and her parents came after the war. It was in America that, for the first time, Jagoda said she considered the possibility of beginning to write songs based on her cultural heritage.
"You’re talking to a survivor," said Jagoda. "A survivor lives with memories, as much as you want to erase the whole thing … it stays with you."
Those memories prompted Jagoda to begin writing songs out of her own Sephardic heritage and in the native language of Ladino.
"(Some) survivors come up with books, photographs, lectures. I just mainly find myself pouring the whole thing into a song, and that’s how these songs came to life," she said.
Jagoda's music combined the traditional Spanish elements of the Sephardic roots with a Balkan flavor from her upbringing in Yugoslavia. She wrote songs about her children, her religion, and the family members she had lost in the Holocaust. Nearly 40 years after she began writing, Jagoda’s efforts caught the attention of the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2002, she was awarded one of 12 annual NEA Heritage Awards for "keeping the flame" of Sephardic music alive. Shortly thereafter, the Virginia branch of the NEA, the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities (VFH), came calling to see if Jagoda would be interested in participating in their apprenticeship program, which pairs a master artist with a protégé for a nine-month period.
"The idea is that it's more than a lesson or a class. The idea is the apprentice really absorbs all the nuances of the tradition, the stories behind it, the history," said Jon Lohman, executive director of the VFH’s Virginia Folklife Program. Jagoda chose Gaeta, with whom she had performed prior to their master/apprentice program. They had gotten aquainted while Jagoda's daughter was taking guitar lessons from Gaeta at her classes in Clifton.
"This whole apprenticeship program was something I was hungry for, and I didn’t even know that could happen. At my age, it was something that was very necessary. What happens to all these songs I’ve accumulated, brought to America?" said Jagoda. "I heard in her voice the possibility that we could blend, and not only blend, that she could understand this type of music."
THE APPRENTICESHIP lasted nine months until the summer of 2003. When it finished, Gaeta was hungry for more. She solicited a grant through VFH to fund the next step of her project, the album of songs. Produced by Grammy award-winning singer/songwriter Jon Carroll, who is based in Leesburg, the album attempts to capture the cultural background of Jagoda’s songs, along with the addition of subtle modern instrumentation that will show the music’s evolution as it has traveled the world with Jagoda.
"What kept this music alive is that they just kept singing wherever they went, they adapted to the place they were. So she’s kind of adapted to here, and now I’m adapting it to Burke, Va., in 2005," said Gaeta. "I’m still singing in her language, but I’m also interpreting it from my experience."
More concerts will surely follow, and Gaeta said she is planning on donating a portion of the proceeds from album sales to a foundation she started, the Flory Jagoda Sephardic Music Foundation.
What started as mutual admiration and respect for their shared Jewish heritage has quickly become something greater between Gaeta and Jagoda.
"Often it's through these art forms that people find this deeper connection that otherwise they would not have anticipated. I think they found that through the art," said Lohman.
Gaeta, who has traveled the world with her music, including performing for several years in Argentina, said she has no plans to write Sephardic music of her own, but now said she feels a "responsibility" to continue carrying the torch passed to her.
"It really has grounded me in everything I know, my Judaism, my Latin American experiences in Argentina and this person," said Gaeta. "She’s almost single-handedly kept something alive. I feel really inspired by her. I feel honored and obligated, but in a good way."