İbrahim Elmas, a farmer from Hırka village near Merzifon, stood before the conservatory's collectors twice on 8 July 1943. The first time he sang "Mail Oldum" as one of a group of five, and that recording later entered the TRT repertoire. The second time he sang a deyiş called "Bülbül" on his own, and the first line written on the slip points to a gathering of a religious order: "Bugün pir divanına vardım", "today I came to the pir's assembly". What remains of this second recording is that line and the number of the record. No trace of it appears either in the TRT repertoire or in any printed collection.

Catalogue Data

  • Repertoire no.: none; it is not registered to Amasya in the TRT repertoire
  • Region: Merzifon (the place of recording is written plainly on the slip)
  • Source performer: İbrahim Elmas; a farmer from Hırka village, Merzifon, birth year on the slip Rumi 1320 (about 1904), his instrument presumed in the catalogue to be the saz
  • Collected by: the Ankara State Conservatory collecting team: Halil Bedii Yönetken, Muzaffer Sarısözen, technician Rıza Yetişen
  • Date of collection: 8 July 1943
  • Archive location: former Ankara State Conservatory Folklore Archive (now at the Hacettepe University State Conservatory), record 1126/B-1; no. 3677 in Kaya's catalogue
  • Genre: deyiş
  • Mode, metre: unknown, as no notation has been published
  • Words and music: recorded as anonymous
  • Source link: in place of a TRT link, Celal Volkan Kaya's catalogue thesis
  • Overview article: The Melody of the Yeşilırmak

Lyrics

The catalogue holds only the opening line:

Bugün pir divanına vardım

A pir divanı is the assembly held before the head of a religious order; the singer begins by saying that he came to this assembly today. What followed, what was voiced in the pir's presence, and why the piece was named "Bülbül", the nightingale, cannot be gathered from the slip. The rest of the deyiş and its notation have never been printed; the recording is on side B of record 1126.

Story

The slip ties the deyiş to no âşık. How it was composed, and whether it had any link with a cem in Merzifon or with a particular pir, are questions the printed sources leave open.

Musical Features

Nothing has been written on the tune, though the other side of the record says something about how that day's recording went. Side A of the same record holds the "Divan (Bektaşiler)" sung by Ali Baki Gül and the "Saz(?) Halayı" played on zurna and davul by Osman Keleş and Hüseyin Duran. This neighbourhood shows that the deyiş, too, was one link in the long chain of recordings made in Merzifon that day; about the structure of the tune it says nothing.

Performers and Recordings

No singer of the deyiş other than İbrahim Elmas is known. İbrahim Elmas's name appears as "İbrahim Elman", again with the birth year 1320, on the copy of the slip quoted in the TRT entry of the group recording he took part in; that song is described on the Mail Oldum Hub Cemale Bakmaya page. The next day in Gümüşhacıköy, Sabahtan Uğradım Pir Divanına, sung by Aşir Sirke and attributed to Nesimî, also opens with an arrival at the pir's assembly. The two lines resemble each other, but the slips record two separate pieces.

Bibliography

Online sources