All that survives of this long song today is a title and a half-read line. During its work in Merzifon in the summer of 1943, on 7 or 8 July, the collecting team of the Ankara State Conservatory recorded a piece from Âşık Musa Aslan titled "Acem Ağzı (Yoḫarı Memleket Ağzı)" and wrote its first line on the collection card as "Sendeyimiş(?) bu yerlerin hekmeti". The question mark belongs to the cataloguer who read the card; the reading of the word is uncertain. It never made its way into the TRT repertoire, and neither its notation nor its full text appears in any published source.

Catalogue Data

  • Repertoire no.: none; not registered in the TRT repertoire under the Amasya region
  • Region: Merzifon (in square brackets in the catalogue, i.e. as the presumed place of recording)
  • Source person: Âşık Musa Aslan, who is also the performer
  • Collected by: the Ankara State Conservatory collecting team (Halil Bedii Yönetken, Muzaffer Sarısözen, technician Rıza Yetişen)
  • Date of collection: 7/8 July 1943
  • Location in the archive: Ankara State Conservatory Folklore Archive, disc 1123/A-1; no. 3664 in Kaya's catalogue
  • Genre: long song (âşık ağzı)
  • Mode, rhythm: unknown, as no notation has been published
  • Words and music: recorded as anonymous
  • Source link: instead of a TRT record, Celal Volkan Kaya's catalogue thesis, which gives the recording's details

Lyrics

From the collection card the catalogue transmits only the title of the piece and its first line:

Sendeyimiş(?) bu yerlerin hekmeti

"Hekmet" is the spoken form of "hikmet", wisdom; the line can roughly be understood as "the wisdom of these places was in you", but since even the cataloguer was unsure how to read the first word, this meaning is a guess. Neither the full text nor the notation has turned up in print. The recording is on disc side 1123/A-1 in the Folklore Archive, which, together with the 1943 discs, now belongs to the State Conservatory of Hacettepe University; Kaya writes that in 2014 the archive was closed to use and that he compiled his catalogue from the copies of the cards held at TRT.

Story

No publication tells where the piece came from; only its title remains, and the title points in two directions. "Acem ağzı" suggests a manner of singing associated with Iran and Azerbaijan, while the bracketed "Yoḫarı Memleket", the "upper country" style, may point to an eastern region. Given that Musa Aslan was a minstrel born in Ardahan who settled in Merzifon in 1925, one is tempted to think the name describes an eastern style he brought with him; the card says nothing on the matter, and this link is only a possibility.

Musical Features

No information has been published on the mode, range or structure of the melody. The catalogue calls it an "ağız"; in the minstrel tradition this word denotes a singing melody associated with a particular region or minstrel. Until the notation is published, nothing more can be said.

Performers and Recordings

The only known recording is the disc Musa Aslan sang for the team in 1943. Just before it in the same series of discs, "Alaçam Zamahı", "Yalel Samah" and "Durnalar" were recorded in his voice; the last two entered the TRT repertoire as Eşimden Ayrıldım Yamandır Halim and Gökyüzünde Bölük Bölük Turnalar. For the minstrel's life: Âşık Musa Aslan. Amasya's songs as a whole are described in The Melody of Yeşilırmak.

Bibliography

Online sources