“Ocho Kandilikas” is arguably the most popular Ladino song in the world. How popular? Even the U.S. Marine Band performs it come Chanukah time.
Those Marines probably don’t know that an 85-year-old Bosnian immigrant, Flory Jagoda, wrote the song –– which means “Eight Candles” in Ladino –– and that she’s still singing in that nearly extinct Jewish language of ancient Spain.
Jagoda will per-form Wednesday, March 25, at the Jewish Community Center of the East Bay, as part of this year’s Jewish Music Festival. She will be accompanied on stage by guitarist and vocalist Susan Gaeta. Jagoda calls Gaeta an “apprentice” because, she says, that’s how Ladino music has always been passed down: singer to singer.
“I taught her all the songs,” Jagoda says, “taught her the tradition of the Sephardim.”
Many of those songs Jagoda learned from her Nona, her grandmother, a folksinger and priceless repository of Ladino culture. Her family traces its roots back to Spain and the expulsion of the Jews in 1492. Jagoda’s ancestors ended up in Bosnia around 1560. She points out that much of her music carries traces of her Bosnian Sephardic background, right down to the distinct rhythms.
“It was a family thing,” she says of her girlhood in the towns of Vlasenica and Sarajevo. “Everybody sang. At the holidays and dinners, singing was one of the main things.”
That girlhood was interrupted when the German army swept east. Jagoda survived because her father put her on a train headed south. “He told me to sit in train, don’t talk and just play the accordion,” she remembers. “That’s how I made it. Music saved my life.”
She ended up in an internment camp on an island off the Dalmatian coast. Jagoda later escaped to Italy, where she met handsome American soldier Henry Jagoda. He later took her back to the States and married her. The couple had three children, and currently live in Falls Church, Va.
Jagoda’s parents survived the war, but 42 relatives were murdered by the Nazis and buried in a mass grave near Sarajevo. Jagoda memorializes them in her song “Arvoliko,” which means “Little Tree” in Ladino, so called because a solitary tree marks the place where her family members died. Jagoda has been to the site, and found herself forever changed.
“When I went to the mass grave, I looked up and said ‘Hey, there’s nothing there.’ I lost my God,” she says. “But I believe in other things: goodness and kindness to other people.”
“Arvoliko” is the title track of one of the four CDs she has released over the years. Though she often plays the songs she learned from her grandmother and other Ladino classics, Jagoda distinguished herself by writing new songs in Ladino, helping to keep the language –– and, by extension, Sephardic culture –– alive. The upbeat “Ocho Kandilikas” is her signature song.
A National Endowment for the Arts Heritage Fellow, she has toured the world several times over, and has even performed in Spain, the land of her forebears.
“That was very exciting,” she recalls. “They invited Sephardic performers to give concerts, and we were there. They were warm and friendly. They knew all my songs.”
Midway through her eighth decade, Jagoda has no intention of retiring. All these years after fleeing her homeland, she still feels music is saving her life.
“My Nona left the songs to me,” she says. “I want to preserve them and teach them. I share with love.”
Flory Jagoda performs 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, March 25, at the Jewish Community Center of the East Bay, 1414 Walnut St., Berkeley. Tickets: $16-$20. Information: (800) 838-3006 or www.jewishmusicfestival.org.