After spending 9 July 1943 in Gümüşhacıköy, the Ankara State Conservatory team returned to Merzifon and went on working through the night of the 9th to the 10th. "Bahçeye Getirdi Bir Canan Bizi" is among the pieces recorded that night from the minstrel Musa Aslan. İsmet Akyol wrote down the melody, and the work was filed as TRT no. 2701. In the two quatrains of the words the roses of the garden, the branches of the cypress, the meadow and the grass are all "serhoş", drunk; every quatrain ends on that word. In Nail Demircioğlu's table it is one of two Amasya songs written in 3/8.

Catalogue Data

  • Repertoire no.: TRT THM 2701, kırık hava
  • Region: Amasya, Merzifon
  • Source performer: the minstrel (âşık) Musa Aslan
  • Collected by: the Ankara State Conservatory
  • Collection date: the night of 9-10 July 1943, Merzifon; title in the conservatory list "Baḫçaya Getirdi", disc 1137/B
  • Transcribed by: İsmet Akyol
  • Mode: Hüseynî scale; final and closing note La
  • Metre: 3/4 in the repertoire data; Demircioğlu gives 3/8. The lyrics in the notation are headed "serbest" (free)
  • Words and music: anonymous
  • TRT link: TRT repertoire no. 2701; since TRT does not publish catalogue entries for individual works online, the notation data and lyrics are on Repertükül

Lyrics

Serbest:
(Ah aman) Bahçeye getirdi bir canan bizi
Gördüm o bahçanın gülleri serhoş
Eser bad-ı saba yağar yağmur
Salınır selvinin dalları serhoş (yar yar güzelim yar)
(Ah aman) Böğün yar geliyor yar üstüne
Hiç bakmıyor yarenine dostuna
Yaz gelince çayır çimen üstüne
Çayırın çimenin elleri serhoş (yar yar güzelim yar)

In the first quatrain the singer describes the garden he has entered with his beloved: a beloved brought us into the garden; I saw the roses of that garden drunk. The morning breeze blows, the rain falls; the cypress branches sway as if drunk. That everything in the garden entered with the beloved should look drunk can be understood as the singer projecting his own state onto nature. The word list on the score renders "canan" as beloved, "bad-ı saba" as the morning breeze, "böğün" as today and "yaren" as friend, companion.

The second quatrain is more obscure. The line "Böğün yar geliyor yar üstüne" can be read as today one love coming on top of another, one passion piling upon another; the next line says that whoever comes does not so much as glance at friend or companion. When summer comes one goes out onto the meadow and grass, and "çayırın çimenin elleri serhoş", the meadow's "hands" are drunk. Whether "eller" in this last line means places, the people of the land or literally hands is not explained in the glossary; the line stays open to more than one reading. What is certain is that this quatrain too closes on the refrain word "serhoş", followed by the cry "yar yar güzelim yar".

Story

The slip holds nothing beyond the place, the date and the singer's name, and no name or event occurs in the words. No tradition telling how the song was made could be found.

Musical Features

At the head of the lyrics in the notation stands the word "Serbest". This shows that part of the melody is sung without metre, in free rhythm; that both quatrains open with the cry "ah aman" suggests the free section may be bound up with those cries, but which lines are sung unmetred cannot be told from the words alone. Two different values are given for the metre: the repertoire data have 3/4, Demircioğlu 3/8. In Demircioğlu's table 3/8 occurs in only two works; the other is "Türkiye'miz Şeref Buldu", also collected from Musa Aslan.

The scale is Hüseynî; the melody settles on La and closes there again, using the eight notes of the octave between the low and the high La. In Haluk Yücel's 2018 table the title is spelled "Bahçıya getirdi bir cânân bizi (Merzifon)", following the spoken form, and the song stands among the kırık havas.

Performers and Recordings

Musa Aslan is the only performer in the catalogue data, and no audio file is attached to the work's online entry. That same night Musa Aslan sang four more pieces for the team: "Dembedem" (TRT 2710, "Dem Be Dem Karşıma Gelen Bülbül"), "Kaval Havası", a piece from the tale of "Eşref ile Zöhre", and "Felek Şad Olacak Günün Görmedim" (TRT 1029). İsmet Akyol also wrote the notation of "Dembedem" from that night's recordings; "Gelmiş İken Bu Elleri Gezerim" (TRT 2721), which Musa Aslan sang the day before, is likewise from his hand. No evidence was found that the song was later recorded on disc by other performers.

Collections and Variants

The conservatory catalogue records the song as "Baḫçaya Getirdi" with the first line "Baḫçaya getirdi bir canan bizi". The date is written "09[/10].07.1943": the "10" in square brackets is the cataloguer's inference. Since the team worked that night through the hours joining the 9th to the 10th, the day on which the recording fell could not be fixed. Nothing shows that the song passed into any other collector's recordings. Musa Aslan's other performances in Merzifon and Amasya's melodic repertoire in general can be reached through The Melody of the Yeşilırmak.

Bibliography

Academic studies

Other sources

Online sources