Brazilian musician and singer Carla Sitton Berg grew up singing Ladino songs in Jewish youth choirs. After moving to the United States and building a career in music, Sitton Berg reconnected to her roots and recorded her first song in Ladino, “NES (Miracle).” The song was released on all platforms on November 18, 2021, just in time for Hanukkah.

Carla Sitton Berg was born in São Paulo, Brazil, to a Lebanese mother and a Syrian-Israeli father. Her great-grandmother was the first in her family to move to Brazil, hoping that the climate would improve her bronchial issues. Sitton Berg grew up in a traditional household, attending a Jewish day school and traveling to Rio de Janeiro for the Jewish holidays.

Sitton Berg's first musical memories are with her grandfather, a chazzan (cantor) in Rio de Janeiro. She grew up performing at weddings and singing in choirs, where she learned Ladino. Jewish choirs in Brazil often sang in the Judeo-Spanish language of Sephardic Jews expelled from the Iberian peninsula, but not until 2018, while on a trip to Greece and Bulgaria with the San Diego JDC Impact Network, did Sitton Berg discover that Ladino was also a spoken language.

In 1997, Sitton Berg received her BA in Child Development from the Universidade Paulista; she earned her post-bac in Child Development and Psychology from Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo in 2003. She worked as a preschool teacher and special needs tutor in São Paulo and also volunteered as a choir assistant at Associação Brasileira A Hebraica de São Paulo.

Sitton Berg moved to the United States for marriage and now lives in San Diego with her two daughters. In the United States, she devoted herself to her passion for singing, training with voice coaches, studying instruments including percussion and piano, and beginning to perform. In addition to singing, composing, and performing, Sitton Berg works as an educational psychologist. In 2018 she released her first EP, Thankful, in a Bossa Nova/jazz style. The album includes songs in four different languages in order to reach a wide audience. In December of 2020, Sitton Berg decided to record her first song in Ladino. She performed “NES (Miracle)” at a Hanukkah gathering, and the following year released it on all platforms.

Sources:

Carla Sitton Berg’s Facebook page. Accessed July 6, 2022. https://www.facebook.com/carla.sittonberg.

Carla Sitton Berg’s LinkedIn page. Accessed July 6, 2022. https://www.linkedin.com/in/carla-berg-0763167b/.

SDVoyager. “Meet Carla Berg.” May 23, 2019. http://sdvoyager.com/interview/meet-carla-berg-carla-berg-san-diego/.

Sitton Berg, Carla. “Modern Hanukkah Song : Ladino ‘Miracle.’” Global Jews, December 2, 2021. https://globaljews.org/jewishand/modern-hanukkah-song-ladino-miracle/.