Folklife Recordings

Susan Gaeta:
From Her Nona's Drawer

Sephardic Folk Songs: The Journey Continues

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In 2002, The Virginia Foundation for the Humanities invited Susan Gaeta to participate in the Master/Apprenticeship program with Sephardic musician and composer Flory Jagoda.

Flory Jagoda, a 2002 recipient of a National Heritage Fellowship, is known as “the keeper of the flame” of the once rich Saphardic Jewish song tradition. Flory sings the songs she learned from her nona (grandmother) as a child in pre-WWII Sarajevo – songs which have been passed down in her family since they fled the Spanish Inquisition in 1492. All of her ballads are sung in Ladino, a Judeo-Spanish language dating back centuries.

Susan Gaeta, an accomplished musician in her own right, demonstrates a deep intellectual and personal interest in carrying on this precious traditional art form.

Each time the Sephardic people were exiled, the key to the front door of each family home was carried away by the reluctant travelers... Also carried away was the language and culture of the country that had been home for hundreds of years.

Nona's kitchen drawer was full of song lyrics collected from the many Sephardic women who gatherd there. Flory Jagoda's richest musical inheritance, that now touches me, came from her Nona's drawer. Like the women who breathed before us, the voices and hearts of those who carried the tradition, pass through me to sing for you now.
- Susan Gaeta

 

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