>> From the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. [ Pause ] >> Welcome, everyone, and thank you so much for braving the weather and the traffic and, you know, what passes in Washington for a weather scare. We, fortunately, stayed open. There was a committee that met at 4:00 to decide whether to keep the Library open, and we did. So, yeah. I'm Thea Austin, the public events coordinator for the American Folk Life Center, and on behalf of the entire staff, I want to welcome you here to a screening of a very special documentary, "Flory's Flame". It celebrates Flory Jagoda, who at 91 is the foremost interpreter of Sephardic traditional music in the United States, and is a winner of the prestigious National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Flory, where are you? There you are. So. [ Applause ] Here at the American Folk Life Center at the Library of Congress, we have many collection materials relating to Flory's life and tradition, including documentation from the NEA Heritage Fellowship Awards collection, which we have here, webcasts of her concerts. Here at the Library March 21, 2007, was a beautiful one with Susan Beta, Howard Bass, and Tina Chancy. That was a beautiful concert. September 21st, of course, some of you who are here tonight were also in that concert, and you will see some of that in the documentary, and Flory did an oral history with Howard Bass, a longtime friend and fellow musician. So we also have that in the collections, and you can see those online as webcasts. I would like to especially think our co-hosts tonight for this evening, the embassy of the Republic of Croatia to the United States and the embassy, yes. The embassy of Spain to the United States as well as Spain Arts and Culture. And I think believe tonight we also have representation from the US Department of State, and we may later on have people from the embassies of Hungary, Montenegro, and Israel. So I don't think they've checked in yet, but yeah. I hope they were able to get here. At this time, I'd like to invite Ambassador [Inaudible] to come up and say a few words. [ Applause ] >> Thank you very much. Well, I saw the movie, and you'll see, many of you will shed tears of joy I'm sure. Well, I have, I'm not going to talk about the movie so much, but about what I have learned about Flory Jagoda or Flory Jagoda as we would say in our country, and the meaning of her existence among us. So, and this is a complex thing. So I have it in written. The film you are going to watch isn't about, is about an extraordinary person. Flory Jagoda, born [inaudible] in Sephardic family in Sarajevo, spent her youth in Vlasencia in Bosnia-Herzegovina and in [inaudible], Croatia. Survived the Holocaust, married an American soldier in Italy, ended up as an American, and dedicated her life to keeping alive the miracle of Sephardic music and language. When we spoke just minutes ago, we spoke in three languages. That was fantastic experience, too. I believe that Madam Jagoda was gifted so abundantly by musical talent that she couldn't help herself but to become a musician. The inner urge was so strong that we can call her the musician. She's an artist, worldly outlet of the divine in us humans. She's an uncommonly cheerful lady to whom the very mystery of the human ability to reproduce a divine harmony and beauty reaches us to us commoners, to us prone to oblivion, and, therefore, to repetition of not just stupid but very, but often evil blunders. Her music is simple. Sometimes joyous. Sometimes happy but sorrow and nostalgia. The songs, the poetry she collected, wrote, and performed are simple, but whether cheerful or sad, they carry an extraordinary weight. A hurting burden, indeed, of history and remembrance. The history and remembrance her music keeps alive is multi-layered and deep. She sings in Ladino, an old but forgotten language spoken by the Spaniards in the 15th century and preserved in a cultural capsule of the Jewish Sephardic [inaudible] of the Turkish Ottoman Empire. The Sephardic Jewish culture, their language, poetry, and music have survived the pogrom of the Medieval Inquisition in Spain, but have almost disappeared under the systematic horrors of the European Holocaust. As you will see, it was fate, faith, music, and poetry that helped the Jews survive their exile from Spain. On the more personal experience level, as Flory believes, you'll see that in the movie, it was her musical talent what helped her to survive the Holocaust in Croatia. She literally played and sung her way out of certain death while fleeing from [inaudible] by train or in [inaudible] the fascists were rounding up Jews and sending them to death camps in Croatia and in Germany. This event is supported as you have heard by two embassies, the Spanish embassy and the Croatian embassy. Both nations threated the Jews with extermination and almost succeeded in it. And against all odd, there is Flory Jagoda, singing in an antiquated Spanish, her [inaudible], and there she is singing Croatian popular song of her youth in Ladino, and the other time, there she is singing Bosnian Muslim songs in Bosnian and in Ladino, and there she is with her guitar like [inaudible] bride flying above the blue memories of death and suffering over her people. Making us all better in spite or maybe precisely because the generosity of her music and poetry, making us even more deeply ashamed of our capacity for inflicting misery and death to other beautiful human beings just because they are others. Flory's culture is Jewish, but it is also Spanish and Bosnian and Croatian. Her culture is, obviously, American, too. Its [inaudible]. It is a culture of remembrance, neither forgiving nor forgetting. It generously flies above narrow-minded divisions we become so easily prone to. Especially in times of crisis when we, who at least once in our history we were all immigrants, loathed immigrants, and when we who at one time were all persecuted for having different religion or culture, loath people of different relations and cultures. Flory's art and her life story remind us, it makes us remember that we must not allow ourselves ever again to succumb to the simple-minded spirit of the collective we as opposed to the collective them. The moment we allow for the simple-minded division, we are just a step from pogrom from Holocaust. Think about that. As I said at the beginning, Flory is, indeed, an extraordinary person. She's not a genius like Mozart or Beethoven. She's not a celebrity like Michael Jackson, but, still, she has made it possible for the genius of multiple cultures to speak and sing to us in one voice. In one language saved from oblivion. The simple story of her life told in this movie, there is the author, is meant to save us from oblivion, not to entertain us. Last but not least, our special thanks to, of course, the, to the institution whose own [inaudible] is to save America from oblivion, and that is the Library of Congress for making this event possible. Thank you very much. [ Applause ] >> Thank you so much, Ambassador. That was beautiful. In just a second, I'm going to invite the filmmakers up, but I wanted to let you know that after the, as soon as we see the film, we're going to have a Q and A with the filmmakers that will be mediated or moderated I should say by Dr. Steven Winick, who's a colleague of mine in the American Folk Life Center. A man of many talents, and one of them is moderating Q and A's. So we have that to look forward to. So I would like to at this point invite Curt Fissel and Ellen Friedland of [inaudible] to come up and talk about the film. [ Applause ] >> Well, I'm just trying to recover. Emotionally, that was just really so special and so beautiful. Thank you so much, and as you were speaking about that, Flory, I kept imaging kind of reversing time. If you could have ever imagined as a teenager living in [inaudible], getting your first harmonica, what we know as accordion, and then having to flee your way through Croatia over Italy that seventy years enhance you'd be sitting in the prestigious halls of the Library of Congress being lauded and applauded by the Ambassador of Croatia. Just really amazing. So we're going to only spend a minute here. I'll let you watch the movie, and we'll be back afterwards, but I just wanted to, we wanted to take a minute to give very special thanks, first of all, to the Library of Congress for inviting us here, for hosting this here, and also Thea Austin for playing such a big role in making all of that come together. Thank you. Also many thanks to the two embassies that participated, to the embassy of Croatia and to [inaudible] for all the hard work that you put into it, and the embassy of Spain and the Spain Arts and Culture Center and Christina [Inaudible] who is also here somewhere. So thank you very much. And to our great producers, [Inaudible] Brakefield, who spent a gazillion hours working with everybody on this project. >> I would like to thank most especially Flory because without her, this, you're the special little Florita. And I'd look at your picture a hundred times, and when I edit them, they never got tired of it, so. Enjoy. [ Applause ] >> So before I begin the question and answer, I'm going to introduce myself. My name is Steven Winick, and I'm the writer and editor in the American Folk Life Center, and the Library of Congress was mentioned several times. The American Folk Life Center is the division of the Library that handles traditional American folklore, and that means all ethnic folklore's that we have here in the United States. So it includes, of course, Flory's tradition as well as many other traditions. And I just wanted to say a little bit about the Center, in particular that we were founded in 1976 by an act of Congress. So Congress actually decided that it was an important thing for the United States to preserve and present American folklore, and they passed a law that said we should do that, and they placed the Center at the Library of Congress. And one of my jobs at the Center is to do our social media. So our blogs and our Facebook posts and everything, and that keeps me in touch with what's going on each day of the year because I have to find something to say, you know, every day, and one of the things that's very interesting about today, about today's date is that it happens to be the birthday of another very important and outstanding lady like Flory, and that was Bess Lomax Hawes, and I don't if you knew Bess, Flory. Bess was the, she was the daughter of John Lomax, who was an important folklore collector for the Library in the 1930's, and she was the sister of Alan Lomax, who was even more famous and also worked for the Library. But Bess herself came to Washington in that same era. In fact, the year after the Folk Life Center was founded, she came to Washington in 1977, and she came here as a folklorist to be the first director of the Folk and Traditional Arts program at the National Endowment for the Arts. And in that job, she created the National Heritage Fellowships, which later were awarded to Flory. So I just wanted to invoke Bess' name because I think she would really love, have loved to be here at this event. She passed away a few years ago, but she would have been so proud of all of the National Heritage fellows, but particularly of someone as outstanding as Flory. So I wanted to mention that as well. And then I'm just going to start it off with one question before I turn it over to the audience for questions, and my question is for the filmmakers, and I wonder how much of Flory's story you knew when you started the project. What made you, what about her story got you interested to make a film about it, and then what was the most exciting or interesting thing that you learned in making the film about Flory and her tradition. >> OK. So I'll answer the first part, or maybe you can answer the second part. I have had the honor of hearing Flory perform for many years. I think the first time I probably heard you perform was about 15 years ago, maybe 20 years ago, and I listened, held onto every word, and walked out and said to Betty, to Flory's daughter Betty, who I know from Montclair, New Jersey where I live, I said we have to do a documentary on Flory. So I was just taken with her, with her performance, with the music, went straight to my heart and soul, and it was integrated with this amazing story. So I think it was very special and very different. And so it's a project that I had wanted to work on for a very long time. >> Well, something I'll say about that just in terms of what you just said is that one of the really beautiful things about the film, one of the things that you did so well, was to do that integration of the story with the songs that were performed at the concert here at the Library in 2013. We really were very proud to have hosted that concert, but even more so now that we see its use in the film. It was a great job that you did of doing that - >> Well, thank you. >> It was, like, weave. I guess it's on. Yes. For me, I edited, and I shot, and I, first of all, I have a wonderful wife who's a great writer, great producer. We had a great subject right here. Her story, every time I heard these songs, I was, like, wow, this is a weave of her life. This was being able to, there's such a tapestry here that can be told, and that was in the edit. It was, like, just taking this weave of the stories and trying to keep it ever so briefly, but keeping the audience. There were, like, up and down points there when we, I wanted everybody to be up, and then all of a sudden it was, but it was just, your life as a tapestry. >> Thank you. >> Many beautiful colors - >> Thank you. >> And I was captured from the minute I saw the twinkle in her eyes. I wanted to - >> Right - >> Tell her story. So. >> Well, that's wonderful, and - >> Like Harry. >> Yeah. And so I would like, you know, turn it over to the audience and see what questions there are for Flory or for our filmmakers tonight - >> And I have mics if you would like a mic to ask your question. >> In fact, please ask for a mic so we can get this all [multiple speakers]. OK. >> I came from Polish Ukraine Russian background, and we don't have music in my family, and I don't know how to find our music, and I was wondering if you could help us figure out how to find our music from our past. >> OK. I think that that part of the world is, the music is very different. One of the people who was in the documentary was [inaudible]. She's from Ukraine. So she would be a very good person to talk to about the roots of a lot of that music. Is [inaudible] here tonight? Yeah, she was supposed to be, but she's not here. Afterwards, we can be in touch, and I can put you in touch with [inaudible]. >> And the American Folk Life Center certainly has a number of recordings as well. >> I don't know if anybody knows that Flory started a [inaudible] in Washington, and she brought together Sephardic people, and it started kind of small. They didn't know there were so many of them around, and now it's kind of big because people are starting to hear about it, but that's what I would recommend is get together people who come from a similar background, and as they start to gather, you'll find music. >> Now the [inaudible] are, you know, Sephardic group, and I think most of the music, we actually do a lot of work in Poland as well, and a lot of the people who are there and working there are [inaudible]. So it's a bit of a different tradition, but I think [inaudible] would be a good person to speak to about that, and then there are great klezmer festivals around. If you're looking for Jewish, specifically Jewish music versus, you know, the local music, there is some great artists, great klezmer festivals. There's a musician, I don't know where he is now because he's always in another country, Michael Alpert - >> Scotland. >> Oh, he's in Scotland now, but actually he just got snow, he just got a position in San Francisco for six months, and he sings with a Ukrainian fellow who lives on the lower east side of Manhattan who's. So it's a combination of, you know, Jewish, Eastern European music with local Eastern European music. There are a lot of people who do that. You can actually Google Michael Alpert, and you, that would be a good person to look up, too - >> And Liz, I think - >> OK. Question for Flory, in the film, it looked like you were just going about your normal life and suddenly the Nazis came. How aware were you of what was going on outside. Was this, like, a total shock, or did you have some preparation before you had to run? [ Background Discussion ] >> A child is a child. A parent is a loving parent who does not tell to the children the danger or the hate. So most when, at the beginning, really, at the beginning, I knew very little. I was very happy in [inaudible]. I loved the songs. I sang certain Croatian songs, Ladino at home. That was Nonna's language, and Nonna was the one who taught you, and you spoke [inaudible]. It means the Jewish language. So we grow up very happy, satisfied, a loving, close-knit family. Getting love like this, you don't feel the hate. That's just how we grew up, and we were very happy. This would be my answer. >> If you want another connection between Flory and the Lomax family, Judith Cohen, who is one of the archivist of the Lomax connection, is a friend of Flory's. My question is are there any stories that you want to tell us about getting any of the images, finding any of the images, especially the older ones, that are in the film. >> I had, Flory's photo collection was great. I do not know how you got your photos out or how your mom got them out, but Flory had a great photo collection. Additionally, I spent time in the archive in [inaudible]. They, I have some photos in there that have never been, I got into the archive. I had a great time there. I mean, it was a, I'm the kind I could spend a whole day there, but I only had a few hours, and they were extremely helpful. I showed up on the island of [inaudible], went into the archive there. You know, that, it's gathering vegetables when we make a film. I love going out and getting this. The hardest stuff I had, the hardest time was finding footage from the air base in Bari where Harry was stationed, and very difficult to find those images. I called up the Bari air field. It didn't exist there today, and [inaudible]. We went to Bari, and, but I did manage to find somebody whose father was stationed there in the Second World War, and he graciously let us use several pictures out of that collection. And I wanted to keep it to stuff that hadn't been seen, and when you go and do a documentary like this, and there's a private collection of photographs like they had saved, the [inaudible] family pictures there. I mean, having that made those particular areas. I was, like, what are we going to cover this with. Let's see what Flory has in her collection, and it was, like, it was gold going through some of this stuff, but, yeah, it was. And I didn't want the normal, the shots you see of the German army and all that stuff. This was all stuff that really hadn't been seen. A lot of that's first time out. So. >> I think we have a question. >> No, I don't have a question. I just would like to say a few words because, I'm sorry. I was fortunate enough to be one of the very first members of the [inaudible] when Flory started this group [inaudible]. They [inaudible]. We were just handful of people, maybe five or six at the beginning, and, you know, these [inaudible] were gatherings once a month where we always would start with some songs by Flory and some of the [inaudible] or Susan [inaudible] or, you know, and we were, there was singing, and we were singing with them, and I am very grateful to the filmmaker for having brought all these songs together because it is what we sing all the time at the [inaudible] and all the. And I want to add a special very fortunate experience with Flory. In 2003, friend of mine from France, actually from, originally from Belgium was a survivor from Auschwitz, and he was invited by the French television to tour, to go back to Auschwitz for a program on television, on radio, I'm not sure, and when he went, he was very upset to notice when he was touring the memorial in Auschwitz that there were plaques in, it was the syntax in the languages of all the victims except there was no one in Judeo-Spanish, or Ladino. And it was, and he started a campaign. The campaign, there were a petition that was circulated, and eventually the Polish authorities granted a wish to have a plaque in Judeo-Spanish, and actually it was given the first place because they had to move the English place to the back to accommodate the display, this plaque. And the [inaudible], who was the survivor who started this petition, insisted he wanted absolutely Flory to come to the ceremony for the dedication of the plaque on the 60th anniversary of the first transport from the Jews from [inaudible], and he wanted her to sing a song who, which according to him may have saved his life. It was a song that he had learned from his mother, and that his mother used to sing to him when he was a child, and he was singing it in Auschwitz, and the song is [talking in foreign language], or "Trees Are Crying a Rain", and that was, he said, he claims that that song may have saved his life because whenever he would sing it, he would gain an extra portion of soup that may have saved his life. And he wanted Flory to come to the ceremony for the dedication of the plaque, and to sing [talking in foreign language], and she did that, and the way, and the fortunate. I was very fortunate to travel with her to Auschwitz, and that's a memory that I will keep for the rest of my life. And to this day, the [inaudible] are very vibrant because we started, as I said, with a handful of people, maybe five or six. Now we are bursting at the seams, and we have to refuse people because we cannot accommodate, since we hold these [inaudible] in the private houses, you know, one day in my house, one day in somebody else's house, you know, and we can accommodate only so many people, and we have more demand, and we can really accommodate. So this is all thanks to Flory. I [inaudible] deep debt of gratitude for that. I just wanted to pay you a tribute for that. >> Thank you. [ Applause ] >> The feeling, the feeling when you leave home, and you come to another country, you are saying to yourself how is it going to be here. By that time, I was a big girl, and I knew danger. I knew that love is the only thing that I want to continue life. Here I am. How do I live here? What do I do? I can't speak the language. How am I going to continue? The memories that came with me, how will I get rid of and forget? It's this country that did it, and I felt at home. I love this country. Let's enjoy it. [ Applause ] >> Not yet. >> Not yet. >> Can we sing a little bit? >> [Inaudible] there may be other questions - >> Yeah. I wonder if there are any other questions first. [ Background Discussion and Laughter ] >> Hi. I may represent more than just me. As being a singer, I'm a lover of Sephardic music, Ladino music, and I'm wondering where these beautiful songs that you sing and that you share with your family, where can people like me be able to get music, sheet music, recordings. I mean, I have some recordings, but I am just dying to start singing your songs, and I'm sure a lot of other people feel the same way. >> I think there are, Sephardic songs are available on CD, and afterwards I think probably the top two, Betty, you'll be able to direct everybody to where they can purchase the CD's online - >> And there's a songbook. >> Oh, [multiple speakers] there is? >> Songbook of music, yes - >> That's fantastic. Wow. Let's all start singing. >> Are there any other questions before we sing? >> Well, take it away - >> Alright. We'll let Flory lead us - >> We have a few minutes to sing. Just to let you all know. Well, allow me to, before we get carried away with song, which I hope we do, I just want to thank you all, first of all, for a beautiful film and a beautiful life. So thank you very much. And I want to thank some of the people who have worked really hard on this event, especially today, which was a wild ride. So Dino [inaudible], from the Croatian embassy. Shawna Brakefield worked really hard. Christina [Inaudible], Mike Turpin, and Jay [inaudible], John Gold, the three of them worked very hard on the sound and the projection. Venetia Harrison, Tracy Dodson, Wanda Cartwright, Christy Dane, our whole ITS team who is taping this for webcast. Thank you very much. Michael Salmans helped to keep the library open. So I want to give a shout out to him. And, of course, the catering company, and all of who came through the weather and the traffic tonight. So thank you all for being here. So now take it away. Let's sing. >> Thank you for joining us. More than happy that I have a chance to share, especially to share my happy times of living in the same country, and I want to thank very, very much to Library of Congress to give me that chance. Thank you. >> And - >> Flory, do you have a song? Can you lead us in a song? What? >> You want to do the - >> OK. >> Can I sing la, la, la, la? >> You can. Betty, can she sing la, la, la, la? >> I don't think anybody wants to hear anymore [inaudible]. >> Did you want to have a song? >> I think people would like to sing la, la, la, la, though, but they didn't get a chance to sing before so. >> We can watch them sing la, la, la, la if you get them started. >> We'll sing it. [ Singing La La ] Now the lyrics will really have the meaning. How [inaudible] go a little higher, no. How good it is - >> How good it is - >> To meet a friend - >> To meet a friend - >> To share a song - >> To share a song - >> And to share a dance, you should get up. So clap our hands - >> So clap our hands - >> And let's be merry - >> And let's be merry - >> Let's sing and sway - >> Let's sing and sway - >> On this wonderful day - >> On this wonderful day - [ Singing La La ] >> Thank you. I love you. >> Thank you. [ Applause ] >> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress. Visit us at loc dot gov.