Flory Jagoda

Flory Jagoda was a singer, guitarist and songwriter from Sarajevo who became the best-known voice of Sephardic songs in Ladino, the Judeo-Spanish language of the Balkan Jews, and also sang Bosnian sevdalinka. She was born Flora Papo on 21 December 1923 in Sarajevo, into a Bosnian Jewish family, and grew up there and in Vlasenica. Her best-known song is the Hanukkah song "Ocho kandelikas".

Music came from her family: she was raised in the musical Altarac family, who played the tamburica, guitar, violin and tambourine and spoke Ladino at home. Her grandmother was a Sephardic folk singer, and the songs she taught the young Flory by ear, never written down, became the heart of Flory's work. Her mother later married Michael Kabilio, and the family settled in Zagreb.

When Germany invaded Yugoslavia in April 1941, her stepfather put the 16-year-old on a train to Split with false papers; she played her accordion all the way, with the passengers and even the conductor singing along. The family lived on the island of Korčula until 1943 and then crossed to Bari in Italy, where she met the American soldier Harry Jagoda. She came to the United States with him in 1946 and later settled in Northern Virginia. Forty-two members of her family were killed in the war.

In America she taught piano, accordion and guitar and worked with choirs and schools. Her first record, Kantikas di mi nona (Songs of My Grandmother, 1988), held the songs of her grandmother. Memories of Sarajevo followed, then La nona kanta (The Grandmother Sings, 1992), songs she wrote for her own grandchildren, and Arvoliko (2006), named after a tree in Bosnia that marks the grave of 42 members of the Altaras family. In 2006 she also recorded Sephardic duets with Ramón Tasat. Her songs used Balkan rhythms and a Bosnian style, with modern chords for younger listeners.

She was a leader of the revival of Ladino song. In 2002 she received a National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and the documentary The Key from Spain told her story; Flory's Flame followed after her 90th-birthday concert at the Library of Congress in 2013. Flory Jagoda died on 29 January 2021, aged 97.