Suzanne Bona: Trio Sefardi is a Northern Virginia based ensemble that performs traditional songs of the Sephardim, the descendants of Jews exiled from Spain in 1492. They will be performing in Fairfield, Connecticut, on the campus of Sacred Heart University on Saturday, November 4th. Two of Trio's musicians, Howard Bass and Tina Chancey, join me on Zoom to talk about their upcoming concert program.
Hello! There! So would you please start by just explaining more about who the Sephardim are and what the particular characteristics of Sephardic music are.
Howard Bass: The Sephardim are the descendants of the Jews of Spain. Exiled in 1492, and spread throughout the Mediterranean, North Africa, the Middle East, the southern parts of Europe, and in particular in the Ottoman Empire - in the eastern side of the Mediterranean, Turkey, the Balkans. And there they lived and flourished for many centuries up until World War II, in most cases, especially in the Balkans, where most of the communities were destroyed by the Nazis in World War II.
The traditions have been kept alive in a variety of ways, and through singers and through the work of folklorists and ethnic musicologists who collected these songs in the twentieth century for the most part, and also because nowadays there are people actually writing new songs. So the repertoire is, considering such a small segment of the overall world population, the repertoire is surprisingly large and varied, because it comes from very diverse places from the eastern Mediterranean, from Turkey, from which is one south, from the Balkans, which is another from North Africa, which is yet another.
So we as a trio have benefited largely from our interactions and our work over many years with Flory Jagoda, originally from Bosnia, who kept alive the traditions that were passed down through her family and through her community, and to which she added immeasurably with songs that she composed, and arrangements she made of a good many old songs that she remembered learning from her grandmother.
Suzanne Bona: So each of you has a, you know, a personal connection to this music. Do you want to talk a little bit about what that importance is to each of you, and also why it's important to you to share it with audiences?
Tina Chancey: I think to most of us, or to the 3 of us who were in the group, what's important is to help the tradition continue that it's an honor to be working with Flory Jagoda who has spent her, spent her whole life sharing things from her past, to give people a sense of what her community was like, what her family was like, how they celebrated things together! And she wrote songs that were just full of joy, full of excitement, full of appreciation of sharing. And to help that to help continue that sharing is just something that it feels really worthwhile to do.
Howard Bass: Well, I first met Flory Jagoda when I was in a group called La Rondinella, a group that Tina also joined after the first year or 2 of the group's existence. We were doing a performance in the Washington DC. Area. We were essentially an early music group, but we also did some Sephardic songs, and Flory Jagoda showed up at one of our first concerts and introduced yourself after the program, because she was so excited about somebody else in the area doing Sephardic music. And she offered to teach us some of her songs. which, of course, we wanted to do. And we also did some performances with her.
In the late 1990s after Flory had a stroke from which she almost completely recovered, but she wasn't able to use her fingers as reliably, and she had prior to the stroke, she called me up and said, “Would you like to be my accompanist?” And I said, “Let me think about it. Yes!” And that led to an association that lasted about 20 years, the last 20 years or so of her career. We traveled extensively, and I heard her stories over and over again, but I never got tired of hearing them, and I certainly never tired of being with Flory, who was a diminutive person with the biggest heart you could imagine. So as Tina said, the importance of continuing kind of got embedded over the years. And we formed Trio Sefardi in 2011 when we could see that Flory's career was starting to wind down right because she was already 90 years old, and wasn't gonna last much longer.
So we began the group with the idea of continuing her work, but also expanding beyond her Sephardic traditions. And so we draw from a fair number of sources now both recorded and print.
Meeting Flory Jagoda and performing with her - it's one of the best things that has happened to me in my musical life and in my life in general.
Suzanne Bona: So your group Trio Sefardi features voice and lute, guitar, bowed string instruments and percussion. And for this program at Sacred Heart University you will be sharing the program and joined by an elite student vocal ensemble called 4 Heart Harmony. What can we expect to hear on this special collaboration?
Howard Bass: Well, they've asked us to perform 2 pieces with them with the choir songs that they've learned, including one that is a Flory, well, both of them are Flory Jagoda songs. So we'll be playing along with them on those 2 songs and they'll be joining us for on 2 songs on our part of the program.
Our part of the program will be based on a very simple principle called Sephardic roots and branches. We start with songs that establish the Sephardic, the Jewish part of the Sephardic heritage. We move on to songs that come from the Diaspora, from various places where the Sephardim settled, following the expulsion in 1492 and then we move from there to a sort of more general part of the program, because so much of the repertoire, like traditional music everywhere comes from or deals with everyday life - love, loss, death, heartbreak, all the food…
Tina Chancey: courtship.
Howard Bass: and courtship in particular
Tina Chancey: successful and not successful.
Howard Bass: We will probably include one song related to the holocaust in which, huge proportion of the Sephardic population was murdered. And then end with more celebratory songs in particular, because it's November, and we're within the shadow of Hanukkah. We’ll do 2, 3 songs that Flory composed one called Hanukkah Hanukkah, one called Las Tias - meaning the aunts in which she talks about how her aunts celebrated various holidays in their homes. And then her most well-known song, which is called Ocho Kandelikas, 8 little candles.
Tina Chancey: and most people who don't know any Sephardic music know that one.
Suzanne Bona: You're also coming to work with students who attend a Catholic University. So there's probably at least a little bit of discussion context. Maybe you know, maybe a little bit of outreach in preparation for your collaboration with them. How do you plan to do that?
Tina Chancey: I think that's a great thing, you know. There seems to be a tendency these days to avoid conflict by just pushing things away, that might in some way engender discussion. But we can't help thinking that it's a great thing to discuss. Especially in person with, you know, people who can explain who they are and what they're doing, so that people can ask us questions, and we can find out what we have in common, and the type of things that we like to share together. And I think that goes a long way towards making people who don't know much about each other more comfortable with each other, and that can't be bad.
So I look forward to coming into the school and talking about some of the traditions that that made Flory's family, you know, feel a sense of warmth and friendship just at the same time that that people are starting to anticipate their own holidays. Seems to me it to be a good, a good thing to talk about.
Suzanne Bona: I've been speaking on Zoom with Howard Bass and Tina Chancy, 2 members of Trio Sefardi. They will be performing in Fairfield, Connecticut, on the campus of Sacred Heart University in the Chapel of the Holy Spirit on Saturday, November 4th, at 8 p.m. And they'll be joined by the student vocal ensemble 4 Heart Harmony. There is more about the November 4th concert on our website. Thank you so much.
Tina Chancey: You bet.
Howard Bass: Thank you, Suzanne
For more information about the concert or to get tickets - https://edgertoncenter.org/events/1492-exile-exploration/
