Flory Jagoda

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Flory Jagoda (born December 21, 1923 in Sarajevo , Yugoslavia , † January 29, 2021 in Alexandria , Virginia ) was a Yugoslav -American songwriter and singer of Sephardic music.

Life

Flory (Florica) grew up in a Sephardic family where Ladino was spoken. Her father Samuel Papo was a musician. Her parents separated after a few years and Flory moved with her mother Rosa Altarač to Vlasenica , where she grew up. The mother remarried and moved to Zagreb ; Flory initially stayed with her grandmother in Vlasenica, but then followed to Zagreb and was adopted by her stepfather Michael Kabilio, she has been called Florica Kabilio ever since. She learned music in her family environment and took piano and ballet lessons in Zagreb; Her stepfather gave her an accordion as a present, which she quickly learned to play. After thisGerman invasion of Yugoslavia and the establishment of the Independent State of Croatia as a puppet regime, she was no longer allowed to attend school as a Jew.

The family initially fled to the Dalmatian coast, which was not part of the Independent State of Croatia but was occupied by Italy, and after the end of fascism in Italy they were able to reach Bari as refugees . There Flory worked as a translator for the United States Army . She met the American soldier Harry Jagoda (1913-2014), an Ashkenazi Jew who was born in Poland and grew up in Youngstown , Ohio . She married him on June 24, 1945 and followed him to the USA in 1946. The couple moved to Washington, DC ; Harry Jagoda worked as a building contractor and bank manager.

As Flory Jagoda learned only years later, her family was in Vlasenica on May 6, 1942 by Ustashe murdered -members; they killed all 60 Jews they found in the place, 42 of whom were related to Flory Jagoda. Her parents were able to emigrate from Italy to the USA in 1948.

Flory Jagoda had four children, who were born between 1947 and 1959. In 1956 the family moved to Falls Church , Virginia . Flory played piano and accordion privately, made music privately and was a co-founder of the Jewish Folk Arts Society , at whose celebrations she performed. After her mother's death in 1972, she began to write down the songs she had learned as a child from her grandmother and other relatives.

She gave her first public concert in 1982 at the Sixth & I Historic Synagogue in Washington. From then on she often performed with concerts (often accompanied by her children), where she played the songs from her childhood and songs she wrote herself, gave workshops and gave lectures. Concert tours took her to Yugoslavia in 1985 and to Spain in 1994 , and in 1999 she performed in Vienna .

Among other things, she sang lullabies for children, sad romances about the abandoned homeland, songs about Hanukkah , songs about the siege of Jerusalem and many other topics. She was a cult figure of American ethno music and the Sephardic scene. Flory Jagoda recorded a number of albums with Sephardic folk songs and some original compositions. Her voice was young and beautiful, and her singing was inimitable. In this way the most original direction of the Spanish melodies merge with the sounds of the Orient and the unmistakable rhythms of the Balkans .

One of her most famous self-written songs, the Hanukkah song Ocho Kandelikas (eight candles) has been covered by numerous bands and performers, including Pink Martini and Yasmin Levy .

Jagoda died in late January 2021 at the age of 97.

Albums

  • Songs of My Grandmother = Kantikas Di Mi Nona, 1983, Altarasa 1001 (also as CD: 1995, Global Village CD 169)
  • Memories of Sarajevo (More Sephardic Songs), 1983, Altarasa 1002-A
  • Flory Jagoda & Family, La Nona Kanta - The Grandmother Sings, CD 1992, Global Village CD 155 (with her son Elliot Jagoda and her daughter Lori Jagoda Lowell)

Songbook

Reports

  • The Key From Spain: The Songs and Stories of Flory Jagoda, 2002. Documentary by Ankica Petrović.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ She herself gave her year of birth partly as 1926, see contemporary witness interview 2013 under web links
  2. ↑ See the obituary article from the Washington Post on legacy.com and the obituary on the BnaiKeshet Synagogue homepage
  3. ↑ Miljenko Jergović , Flory Jagoda , August 27, 2009
personal data
SURNAME Jagoda, Flory
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kabilio, Florica (name from adoption to marriage)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Yugoslav-American songwriter and singer
DATE OF BIRTH December 21, 1923
PLACE OF BIRTH Sarajevo , Yugoslavia
DATE OF DEATH January 29, 2021
Place of death Alexandria (Virginia)