Neither the words nor the tune of this lament, also known as "Değme Felek" ("Do Not Touch, O Fate"), are anonymous: both belong to Âşık Özlemi of Gümüşhacıköy, who died in 2014, by his real name Muammer Badem. The song was collected by Sabahat Akkiraz, the notation was written by Altan Demirel and Erdem Çalışkanel, and the work entered the TRT repertoire as no. 4250, its subject given as "ağıt", lament. According to the story that Yaşar Özürküt bases on the poet's own account, the song was born live on air in a television studio in Çorum in March 1995, on the day he received news of the death of the woman he loved.

Catalogue Data

  • TRT repertoire no.: 4250, kırık hava; subject lament
  • Region: Amasya; the repertoire names no district, Haluk Yücel's list says Merzifon, and the poet was from the village of İmirler in Gümüşhacıköy
  • Source performer: Âşık Özlemi (Muammer Badem)
  • Collected by: Sabahat Akkiraz
  • Transcribed by: Altan Demirel, Erdem Çalışkanel
  • Collection date: not in the catalogue entry
  • Mode: Hicaz scale; final and closing note La
  • Metre: 7/8
  • Words and music: Âşık Özlemi; after a ceremony at the Okmeydanı Cemevi on 4 March 2014 he was buried in Gümüşhacıköy. The words are under copyright.
  • TRT link: TRT repertoire no. 4250; as TRT has no page for the work, the catalogue data, lyrics and the story of the song are on Repertükül.

Lyrics

Since the words belong to Âşık Özlemi and are still under copyright, only the first stanza is given here, in the form found in the repertoire notation:

Bugün benim efkârım var zarım var
Değme felek değme (değme) telime benim
Gül yüzlü cananı (dost dost) elden aldırdım
Ecel oku değdi (değdi) gülüme benim

Zar here means moaning, weeping. The singer asks fate not to touch the string of his saz: today my heart is heavy and I weep; I have lost my rose-faced beloved to another, the arrow of death has struck my rose. In the notation each stanza is followed by a line beginning "Değme zalım değme", "Do not touch, cruel one", which repeats the last word of the stanza. The second stanza tells of the helplessness of the grief: even Lokman Hekim, the legendary physician believed to have a cure for every ill, could not bind this wound; the singer has broken with a friend he considers deceitful, neither mansion nor palace is left to him, and owls have perched on his branch. In the third stanza the âşık speaks his pen name and likens his head to misty mountains; his eyes are wet, his heart weeps blood; autumn has come, the vineyards are stripped, and the wind of decay has touched his rose.

There are small differences between the words in the notation and those given in the story. In the story the last line of the first stanza reads "ecel oku değdi tenime benim", "the arrow of death has struck my body", and the second stanza says "hilebaz dost ile açtım arayı". The notation has "gülüme" and "hilebaz dostunan açtık arayı".

Story

The story of the song was written by Yaşar Özürküt under the heading "Öyküleriyle Türküler" ("Songs with Their Stories"). By his own note it rests on two sources: a letter dated 20 November 2001 from Ferhat Durmuş, a saz artist of Ankara Radio, and what Muammer Badem told in his own words at a musical talk held on 20 April 2005 in the Sermet Çifter Hall of Yapı Kredi Publishing. Every detail given here of the poet's youth and of the song's birth comes from that account.

According to the account, Muammer and Ümmü met and fell in love in their middle-school years in the village of İmirler in Gümüşhacıköy, meeting beneath the rosehip trees on a hill outside the village. Both were of the Alevi faith and regarded the promise they had made each other as an ikrar, a binding vow, and they exchanged promise rings. In 1979 Muammer won a place in the Press and Publishing department of Gazi University, and the same year the families made the engagement official with rings. After the military coup of 12 September 1980 Muammer was arrested over a poem he had written for Ümmü, which had been hung on the wall of an association; he was included in a trade-union case and tried on a charge carrying the death penalty, and spent two years in prison, seven or eight months of them in solitary confinement. Right after his acquittal he was taken into the army.

Meanwhile Ümmü's father, saying he would not give his daughter to a young man "on trial for his life", sent back the promise ring and married his daughter to a civil servant. The story tells that Ümmü was unhappy in this marriage and sent word to Muammer. After a while Muammer too married, kept on with poetry and the saz, and took the pen name "Özlemi", "the longing one". When Ümmü fell incurably ill and returned to her father's house, she wished to see him one last time; Muammer, believing she had broken her vow, did not go to that meeting.

In March 1995 Özlemi was invited to a live broadcast on Hitit TV in Çorum. The friends who met him at the bus station told him that Ümmü had died, that she had asked in her will to be buried under the tree where they used to meet, and that Muammer should be present at her funeral. According to the account, the âşık took up his saz in the studio not knowing what he would play, and this song poured out of him on the spot. The story ends with an embroidered handkerchief that Özlemi took from his pocket after the broadcast, with the letters "M" and "Ü" worked in its corners and a dove with a broken wing in the middle. At the start of the story Özürküt writes that the events took place in the 1970s; the events related, however, run on to 1995.

Musical Features

The short repetitions slipped into the middle of the lines, such as "dost dost", "değme" and "değdi", and the line "Değme zalım değme" at the end of each stanza preserve in the notation the trace of a song improvised to the saz. The scale is Hicaz, the metre a limping 7/8. The tune keeps within six notes, between La, its final and closing note, and the Fa above. Nail Demircioğlu enters the song in his table as "Bugün Benim Efkarım Var", in Hicaz and 7/8; Haluk Yücel counts it among the kırık hava and places it beside the 7/8 songs in his metre table.

Performers and Recordings

According to the story, the song was first sung by Âşık Özlemi himself, live on Çorum's Hitit TV in March 1995. The "performed by" field of the repertoire entry is empty; Sabahat Akkiraz is named as collector. The words also appear in another publication under the title "Değme Felek" with Âşık Özlemi's name. The sources consulted hold no documented information on disc or album recordings. The Amasya repertoire as a whole is discussed in the article The Melody of the Yeşilırmak.

Bibliography

Academic studies

Other sources

Online sources