The surname of the man who sang this song, which begins with the line "Berber dükkanına vardım", is unknown. On 6 July 1943, the day the conservatory team returned to Amasya, it took five pieces from him in succession and wrote his name on the cards simply as "Hüseyin". To distinguish him from other performers of the same name, Kaya's catalogue numbers him "Hüseyin [3]". Berber is the third of these five recordings.

Catalogue Data

  • Repertoire no.: none; not registered under the Amasya region in the TRT repertoire
  • Place of collection: central Amasya (in square brackets in the catalogue, a corrected or presumed place)
  • Source person: Hüseyin (no surname on the card; "Hüseyin [3]" in the catalogue); in the list of performers nicknamed Garip Hüseyin, a carter, year of birth on the card Rumi 1306 (1890-1891), from central Amasya; his instrument given in square brackets as the saz
  • Collected by: the Ankara State Conservatory team: Halil Bedii Yönetken, Muzaffer Sarısözen and the technician Rıza Yetişen
  • Date of collection: 6 July 1943
  • Location in the archive: Folklore Archive, disc 1114/B-1; no. 3626 in Kaya's catalogue
  • Genre: türkü (folk song)
  • Mode, rhythm: not recorded
  • Words and music: anonymous
  • Source link: there is no TRT page; the details are in Kaya's catalogue

Lyrics

The line that passed from the card into the catalogue:

Berber dükkanına vardım

The song opens with an everyday scene, a visit to a barber's shop ("I went to the barber's shop"). What happened in the shop, and whether the song turns into a song in praise of a beauty or a mocking song, cannot be said without seeing the rest of the text. Printed sources hold neither the full words nor the notation; the rest of the song has to be sought among the photocopied collection cards kept by TRT and on the disc in the Folklore Archive, which passed from the Ankara State Conservatory to Hacettepe.

Story

No published account of the song's origin could be found; about the source person, however, the catalogue gives a few details: according to its list of performers, Hüseyin, whose surname was not written on the card, was a carter from central Amasya known by the nickname "Garip Hüseyin", born in the Rumi year 1306; the quarter he came from is not recorded. In the same session he sang, in order, a bozlak, "Beypazarı Havası", this song, a "Bülbül" and a second bozlak; his repertoire moves back and forth between long songs and metred songs.

Musical Features

The disc number shows that the song comes first on side B of disc 1114 and shares that side with Hüseyin's "Bülbül"; this indicates that the piece was not long enough to fill a whole side. Of its mode, metre and range nothing is known.

Performers and Recordings

After Hüseyin's 1943 recording, no later recording or broadcast of the song by another singer was found in the sources consulted. The general picture of Amasya's melodies is given in The Melody of Yeşilırmak.

Bibliography

Online sources