This türkü bears the name not of Amasya but of a town hundreds of kilometres to the east, Bayburt, and it was recorded on disc in the village of Zigala on 5 July 1943. The singer was Mehmet Hulusi Er, who on the same day also gave the collecting team the song "Allah Allah dedik bindirdik ata" under the title "Kızılırmak". The only fragment of the words that passed from the collection card into the catalogue is the opening line; neither the notation nor the full text of the song has been published.

Catalogue Data

  • Repertoire no.: none; not registered under the Amasya region in the TRT repertoire
  • Place of collection: Zigala (today Aydınca) village, central Amasya; the catalogue gives the place in square brackets, as a presumption
  • Source person: Mehmet Hulusi Er
  • Collected by: the Ankara State Conservatory team: Halil Bedii Yönetken, Muzaffer Sarısözen and the technician Rıza Yetişen
  • Date of collection: 5 July 1943
  • Location in the archive: Folklore Archive, disc 1109/A-2 (the disc number is marked with a question mark in the catalogue); no. 3595 in Kaya's catalogue
  • Genre: türkü (folk song)
  • Mode, rhythm: not recorded
  • Words and music: anonymous
  • Source link: there is no TRT page; the recording's details are in Kaya's catalogue

Lyrics

From the words on the card, the cataloguer copied only the first line:

Bayburdun ince yolunda

The spelling "Bayburdun" is a dialect form, written down by ear to keep the singer's pronunciation; the line simply means "on the narrow road of Bayburt". Nothing more appears in any published source. Because Kaya's catalogue deliberately leaves out the words written on the cards, the full text, if it was taken down, survives in the photocopy of the collection card held by TRT and, together with the disc, in the Folklore Archive now attached to the State Conservatory of Hacettepe University, which is closed to use.

Regional Attribution

The only reason a song tied to Bayburt by its title, and to the Bayburt road by its words, is counted among the melodies of Amasya is that it was recorded in Zigala. The other pieces Mehmet Hulusi Er sang that day were a deyiş, an elegy and "Kızılırmak", which later entered the TRT repertoire as a song of Amasya; in other words, the team took from him both local material and songs learned from elsewhere. No other record shows that the song was customarily sung in Amasya or has a local counterpart, so its regional attribution is disputed.

Story

There is no printed account of whose voice the song speaks in or what event it was made about. Where Mehmet Hulusi Er learned it was not noted on the card either.

Musical Features

Since no notation has been published, its mode, metre and range are unknown. The question mark beside the disc number shows that the cataloguer hesitated when reading or checking the number on the card. Er's previous recording, the elegy, runs over from 1109/A-1 onto A-2, so the two pieces appear to share the same side.

Performers and Recordings

Of Mehmet Hulusi Er's recordings that day, "Kızılırmak" passed into the TRT repertoire and is discussed on its own page. For Bayburt, the documented performances begin and end with the 1943 disc. For a general view of Amasya's folk songs and long songs, see The Melody of Yeşilırmak.

Bibliography

Online sources