"Damla düşmeyince göl bulanır mı?" (Does a lake grow cloudy unless a drop falls?) This line at the centre of the hymn answers those who reproach the people who call on God with a question taken from nature, and the words as a whole build that defence in three couplets. The piece, in the Hüseynî mode, is sung in a limping five-beat metre. It was collected from Hacı Asiye Akbaş, Amasya's well-known woman mevlid reciter, and its score was published in the appendices of Fatih Koca's 2015 article; it comes third in the list of eleven pieces Koca collected from Akbaş.

Catalogue Data

  • Repertoire no.: none; it is not on the Amasya list of the TRT repertoire
  • Genre: ilahi, a religious hymn (score title "Hüseyni İlahi - Bizi Kınamayın Hakkı Sevenler")
  • Region: Amasya (city centre)
  • Source person: Hacı Asiye Akbaş (b. 1951), accompanied by Ayşe Candaş
  • Collected by: Osman Akbaş and Fatih Koca
  • Transcribed by: Eren Köksal (revising the collection)
  • Date of collection: not given in the article; Koca's meeting with Akbaş took place in Amasya at the Ramadan Bayram of 2013
  • Makam (mode): Hüseynî
  • Metre and tempo: 5/8, crotchet = 80
  • Words and music: anonymous
  • Source publication: Koca 2015, list p. 937, score p. 941
  • Where the recording is kept: not reported in the publication
  • Source link: the article in Rast Müzikoloji Dergisi; the piece has no TRT link

Lyrics

Bizi kınamayın Hakkı sevenler
Kalbi boş değildir Allah diyenler
Damla düşmeyince göl bulanır mı ?
Rüzgar esmeyince dal sallanır mı ?
Dil allah demese Kalp uyanır mı ?
Allahı zikreden kul kınanır mı ?

The words are printed below the score as these three couplets; their spelling has been left untouched above. The first couplet sets up the address: you who love God, do not reproach us; the hearts of those who say "Allah" are not empty. The next two couplets are made of questions, all in the same shape. A lake does not cloud over until a drop falls into it, a branch does not sway until the wind blows; the heart does not wake unless the tongue says "Allah". The last question returns to the reproach of the first couplet: is a servant who remembers God to be blamed? The sense that emerges from the text may be this: the movement seen from outside, the zikr, has a cause behind it, and that cause is nothing to reproach. The words do not say outright who is reproaching whom.

Story

Where Akbaş acquired hymns of this kind is briefly told in the article. As Koca relates, Akbaş recited the mevlid and the mukabele in countless homes in Amasya, and by being constantly among people she learned the hymns she heard and built up a wide repertoire. Because hymns were passed on at mevlid gatherings by meşk, that is by listening and repeating, she learned many pieces otherwise unknown from older women. From which gathering, or from whom, this particular hymn reached Akbaş is not stated; how the piece came into being and whose the words are is also unknown, and the score marks both lyrics and music as anonymous.

Musical Features

The five-beat limping metre gives the hymn a gait that clearly sets it apart from the others; the crotchet is marked at 80. The first nine bars of the score carry two couplets one above the other: the first couplet is set on the upper line, and the couplet beginning "Damla düşmeyince" on the lower. This section is sung twice and closes with two separate endings; "saz" is written above both, meaning that where the words fall silent at the end of the couplet an instrument plays a short interlude. The final couplet, beginning "Dil Allah demese", then runs without repetition to the "SON" (end) sign in bar seventeen. The key signature carries an F sharp, and the melody comes to rest on La; the highest note used is Mi, the lowest Sol.

Performers and Recordings

Akbaş was not alone in the performance on which the collection rests: according to the article she sang the hymns "with the participation of her younger sister Ayşe Candaş, who was with her". The preceding page of the same article, however, names Candaş as Akbaş's elder sister and states that Asiye Hanım was the youngest of five children; of the two statements, the second agrees with the order within the family. The first collections of Amasya hymns were made by the composer Burhan Özbakır, and those pieces were later sung on the album Amasya İlahileri; whether "Bizi Kınamayın Hakkı Sevenler" is on that album is not known. No documented performance of the tune other than that of the Akbaş sisters has been found. The melodies of Amasya that lie outside Akbaş's hymns, folk songs and long songs alike, are gathered in a separate article under the title The Melody of Yeşilırmak.

Bibliography

Online sources