The recording of a song called "Beypazarı" in Gümüşhacıköy was the second Beypazarı the team met in Amasya that summer. Three days earlier, in central Amasya, a singer named Hüseyin had sung a "Beypazarı Havası" opening with the line "Gafil idim bağladılar kolumu". The first line of this piece, sung by Bektaş Yıldız on 9 July 1943, is quite different: "Gezdür Garacoğlan gır atı gezdür". Neither its notation nor its full words have been published.

Catalogue Data

  • Repertoire no.: none; not registered under the Amasya region in the TRT repertoire
  • Place of collection: Gümüşhacıköy (in square brackets in the catalogue, presumed)
  • Source person: Bektaş Yıldız
  • Collected by: the Ankara State Conservatory team: Halil Bedii Yönetken, Muzaffer Sarısözen and the technician Rıza Yetişen
  • Date of collection: 9 July 1943
  • Location in the archive: Folklore Archive, disc 1133/B-1; no. 3704 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 first line of the card passed into the catalogue in the Gümüşhacıköy pronunciation:

Gezdür Garacoğlan gır atı gezdür

In today's spelling it can be read as "Gezdir Karacaoğlan, kır atı gezdir", "Walk the grey horse, Karacaoğlan, walk it"; the speaker asks someone he addresses by name to walk the grey horse. The spelling "Garacoğlan" recalls the name of the famous minstrel Karacaoğlan, but whether the name in the line is a pen name or a form of address, or whether it might also be read as "Kara oğlan" (dark lad), cannot be told from a single line; the catalogue did not add a poet's name to the title. The rest of the line never reached print. Yıldız's voice remains on disc 1133 in the Folklore Archive, and the written form of what he sang on the copy of the collection card kept by TRT.

Regional Attribution

The name ties the melody to the Beypazarı district of Ankara. Even so, two "Beypazarı" recordings taken from two different singers, in two different places, with first lines that bear no resemblance to each other, suggest that the name may describe not a particular song but a type of melody known as coming from Beypazarı or in the Beypazarı manner. This is an interpretation; the cards do not explain where the name comes from. The work is listed here because it was recorded in Gümüşhacıköy, but there is no evidence that it belongs to the region, and its attribution is disputed.

Story

Like the identity of the person asked to walk the grey horse, the way the song came to be made is not recorded in any published account. Among Bektaş Yıldız's other recordings that day are "Fadimem", "Toḫadıñ Mezerliği", "Karadağ Üstüne Ismarladım", "Gandilli" and a Kırklar zamahı; Beypazarı is not the only piece in his repertoire to bear the name of another place, since the song about the graveyard of Tokat came from the same session.

Musical Features

The scale and metre of the melody are unknown. The recording shares side B of disc 1133 with a güzelleme by Kul Hüseyin sung by Kazım Aygül; side A of the same disc holds Yıldız's divan and "Gandilli".

Performers and Recordings

The only known performer of the Gümüşhacıköy recording is Bektaş Yıldız. Another song Yıldız sang that day entered the TRT repertoire: Tokat'ın Mezerliği. General article on the melodies of Amasya and its districts: The Melody of Yeşilırmak.

Bibliography

Online sources