Bozuh is the second of six pieces recorded in succession for the conservatory team in Gümüşhacıköy on 9 July 1943 by Osman Atmaca, whose kaval the catalogue measures down to the millimetre; not a single word passed from the cards of these six recordings into the catalogue. Apart from its name, date and disc number, nothing is known about it; the catalogue does not even make clear whether the melody had words or not.

Catalogue Data

  • Repertoire no.: none; not registered under the Amasya region in the TRT repertoire
  • Place of collection: Gümüşhacıköy
  • Source person: Osman Atmaca (recorded with his kaval in the catalogue's list of instruments)
  • 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 1136/A-3; no. 3718 in Kaya's catalogue
  • Genre: classed in the inventory as a long song (bozlak); the name on the card is simply "Bozuh"
  • Mode, rhythm: not recorded
  • Words and music: anonymous
  • Source link: there is no TRT page; the details are in Kaya's catalogue

Lyrics

The catalogue gives no line for this recording. Kaya notes that for some pieces with words the text was not taken down during collection, and that the cards of others could not be found, in which cases he made do with the title alone; so the absence of a first line does not prove that the piece was wordless. Its words and notation could not be found in any published source. The recording itself is on side A of disc 1136 in the Folklore Archive; the copy of its card may be looked for among the collection cards at TRT.

On the Name

"Bozuh" is the local pronunciation of the word "bozuk", and in the same catalogue it appears in three different contexts. On 4 July the team recorded in Amasya a "Bozuk" from Osman Samsun with the line "Yüce dağ başında bir top gar idim". On the same day as Atmaca's recording, in Gümüşhacıköy, Bektaş Yıldız's piece beginning "Neyneyim şu dünyanın gamı zinneti" was written down under the title "Neykerim (Bozuḫ)". The third is an instrumental tuning: the tuning of Bektaş Yıldız's saz is recorded on the card as "bozuk tertip". These entries side by side suggest that in the region "bozuk" was used to name a sung type of melody, or tunes played in the bozuk tuning; the card does not say into which of these Atmaca's piece falls.

Story

Although no account or story of the melody's making has been published, the titles of Osman Atmaca's other five recordings sketch a repertoire: "Davarı Suya İndirme", "Yavré", "Gelin Ağlatma", "Oyun Havası" and "Gırnata Havası". The first, as its name shows, is a tune about taking the flock down to water.

Musical Features

The catalogue's list of instruments gives the dimensions of the kaval of Atmaca's that was recorded in Gümüşhacıköy in 1943: it is 92 centimetres long, 18 millimetres wide inside and 2.4 centimetres wide outside; the structure of the kaval is also shown in a drawing. Bozuh's mode, metre and range are unknown, and the card does not tell whether it was played on this kaval or sung with kaval accompaniment. On the disc, Bozuh is preceded by Kazım Aygül's Pir Sultan deyiş and Atmaca's "Davarı Suya İndirme".

Performers and Recordings

Bozuh is known from no recording other than Osman Atmaca's 1943 disc. One of the recordings made in Gümüşhacıköy that day that passed into the TRT repertoire is Meryem Suya Gidiyor. The melodic tradition of Amasya and its districts is described as a whole in The Melody of Yeşilırmak.

Bibliography

Online sources