A historic Jewish cemetery overlooks Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina. (RNS photo/David I. Klein)SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (RNS) — When Flory Jagoda, the superstar of Ladino music, died in 2021, it was a wakeup call for Vladimir Mickovic.
Mickovic, a Bosnian musician from Mostar, realized that with Jagoda’s death, the music of Sephardic Jews was in danger of being lost forever. “The Sephardic music and culture, their proverbs and literature, is a part of our culture here in Bosnia and Herzegovina,” Mickovic told Religion News Service.
Last year, he released a tribute album called “Kantikas de mi Nonna,” or “Songs of my Grandmother,” referring to Flory as the “nonna” of the Sephardic musical world. The album is also an attempt to recreate the pre-Holocaust Jewish musical tradition of the western Balkans.
In the West, Jewish music is often associated with Klezmer, the folk music of Central and Eastern European Jews that came to the United States with Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazi Jewish immigrants. But in Spain and across southern Europe, the entirely different music of the Sephardic Jews once thrived.
Though there were much larger Sephardic communities in Turkey and pre-Holocaust Greece, Jagoda, who was born in Sarajevo, became the best-known musician working in the Ladino language and music. Her Hanukkah song, “Ocho Kandelikas” (“Eight Little Candles”) is a modern classic and has been covered by Pink Martini and Idina Menzel.
When Jagoda, named Flory Papo, was born in 1923, Sarajevo belonged to the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. Sarajevo at the time was known as the “Jerusalem of Europe” for its skyline adorned with the towers of mosques, churches and synagogues. Its population was nearly 20% Jews, most descendants of exiles from Spain at the close of the 15th century who were welcomed to the Balkans, when it was part of the Ottoman Empire.
Flory Jagoda in 2002. (Photo by Tom Pich/Wikipedia/Creative Commons)
Their language, Ladino or Judeo-Spanish, is a mixture of medieval Spanish, Hebrew and Aramaic, peppered with Turkish, Greek and Serbo-Croatian influences, among others.
Music was almost as important a tool in transmitting Sephardic traditions, according to Eliezer Papo, a Sarajevo-born Jew who today leads the Ladino studies program at Israel’s Ben-Gurion University. (Papo said he and Jagoda are not related — or no more than any two people hailing from Sarajevo’s small Jewish community.)
The Bosnian Sephardic musical tradition had its roots in the singing clubs of medieval Spanish synagogues — the karaoke of its day, Papo explained. Jewish men would gather before morning prayer to sing contemporary Hebre …
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Mickovic, a Bosnian musician from Mostar, realized that with Jagoda’s death, the music of Sephardic Jews was in danger of being lost forever. “The Sephardic music and culture, their proverbs and literature, is a part of our culture here in Bosnia and Herzegovina,” Mickovic told Religion News Service.
Last year, he released a tribute album called “Kantikas de mi Nonna,” or “Songs of my Grandmother,” referring to Flory as the “nonna” of the Sephardic musical world. The album is also an attempt to recreate the pre-Holocaust Jewish musical tradition of the western Balkans.
In the West, Jewish music is often associated with Klezmer, the folk music of Central and Eastern European Jews that came to the United States with Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazi Jewish immigrants. But in Spain and across southern Europe, the entirely different music of the Sephardic Jews once thrived.
Though there were much larger Sephardic communities in Turkey and pre-Holocaust Greece, Jagoda, who was born in Sarajevo, became the best-known musician working in the Ladino language and music. Her Hanukkah song, “Ocho Kandelikas” (“Eight Little Candles”) is a modern classic and has been covered by Pink Martini and Idina Menzel.
When Jagoda, named Flory Papo, was born in 1923, Sarajevo belonged to the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. Sarajevo at the time was known as the “Jerusalem of Europe” for its skyline adorned with the towers of mosques, churches and synagogues. Its population was nearly 20% Jews, most descendants of exiles from Spain at the close of the 15th century who were welcomed to the Balkans, when it was part of the Ottoman Empire.
Flory Jagoda in 2002. (Photo by Tom Pich/Wikipedia/Creative Commons)
Their language, Ladino or Judeo-Spanish, is a mixture of medieval Spanish, Hebrew and Aramaic, peppered with Turkish, Greek and Serbo-Croatian influences, among others.
Music was almost as important a tool in transmitting Sephardic traditions, according to Eliezer Papo, a Sarajevo-born Jew who today leads the Ladino studies program at Israel’s Ben-Gurion University. (Papo said he and Jagoda are not related — or no more than any two people hailing from Sarajevo’s small Jewish community.)
The Bosnian Sephardic musical tradition had its roots in the singing clubs of medieval Spanish synagogues — the karaoke of its day, Papo explained. Jewish men would gather before morning prayer to sing contemporary Hebre …nnDiscussion:nn” ai_name=”RocketNews AI: ” start_sentence=”Can I tell you more about this article?” text_input_placeholder=”Type ‘Yes'”]