Âşık Sadık Ayan sang four pieces for the conservatory's collecting team on 5 July 1943 in the village of Zigala, today's Aydınca; "Bülbül", the nightingale, was the third. The slip gives the title and the first line, "Ne ötersin dertli dertli", "why do you sing so full of sorrow", and nothing more of the words. That line opens songs addressed to the nightingale in several parts of Anatolia, and its oldest known trace in Amasya is the collection slip filled in that day. The piece did not enter the TRT repertoire under Amasya, and its notation has never been published.

Catalogue Data

  • Repertoire no.: none; it has no entry under Amasya in the TRT repertoire
  • Region: Amasya, Zigala (Aydınca) village; the catalogue gives the place in square brackets, that is, as an estimate
  • Source performer: Âşık Sadık Ayan; birth year on the slip Rumi 1310 (about 1894), a farmer from Uygur village in the Ezine district of central Amasya; the slip notes "he is an âşık", and his instrument is presumed to be the saz
  • Collected by: Halil Bedii Yönetken, Muzaffer Sarısözen and the technician Rıza Yetişen for the Ankara State Conservatory
  • Date of collection: 5 July 1943
  • Archive location: former Ankara State Conservatory Folklore Archive (now at the Hacettepe University State Conservatory), record 1107/B-1; no. 3586 in Celal Volkan Kaya's catalogue
  • Genre: deyiş
  • Mode, metre: unknown, as no notation has been published
  • Words and music: recorded as anonymous
  • Source link: there is no TRT link; the catalogue data are in Kaya's 2014 catalogue thesis
  • Overview article: The Melody of the Yeşilırmak

Lyrics

All that has come down from the slip is the opening line. The rest of the text Sadık Ayan sang is found neither on the slip nor in any published collection.

Ne ötersin dertli dertli

The singer asks the nightingale why it sings so sorrowfully; these are the words of someone who hears his own grief in the bird's voice. A song collected by the same team five days later, on 10 July, from Ali İpek in Eymür village near Havza, and entered in the TRT repertoire as no. 584, keeps another form of the same address. Its first quatrain reads in the repertoire:

Ne ağlarsın dertli dertli
Dayanamam zara bülbül
Hem dertliyim hem yareli
Attın beni nara bülbül

Roughly: "Why do you weep so full of sorrow, I cannot bear your wailing, nightingale; I am grieving and wounded too, you have thrown me into the fire, nightingale." "Zar" is wailing, "nar" is fire. The Havza text cannot stand in for the Zigala recording: how far the words and the tune of the two coincide could only be learned by listening to the Zigala record. The record is among the holdings of the former Ankara State Conservatory Folklore Archive, today at the Hacettepe University State Conservatory; copies of the recordings and slips made in the 1970s were handed to TRT.

Story

From whom Sadık Ayan learned the piece, and whether the words were tied to a named poet, the slip does not record. "Kitabîden Bir Parça", which he sang in the same session, names a poet, while "Bülbül" carries no such note. Nor is there any printed tradition about how this deyiş to the nightingale came to be composed.

Musical Features

We do not know in which scale or metre Sadık Ayan sang. What is available for comparison are two TRT notations that open with the same line. The Havza song, no. 584, is in the Hüseynî scale and in 3/4+5/8. No. 784, "Ne Ötersin Dertli Dertli", which Sarısözen collected from Âşık Veysel in Şarkışla, is also written in Hüseynî, but its metre is 10/8+8/8 and the repertoire classes it as a lament. No document shows whether Sadık Ayan's tune stood close to either of them.

Performers and Recordings

The only known performance is Sadık Ayan's 1943 record. The same day the âşık also sang "Hoş Geldiniz", "Biz Dinî Batıl" and "Kitabîden Bir Parça" for the team. In Kaya's table comparing the collection slips with the TRT repertoire, the Havza song no. 584 matches Ali İpek's slip, while no. 784, sourced from Âşık Veysel, matches no slip at all. According to a note in the repertoire entry, the title on the notation of no. 584 was first written by mistake as "Ne Ötersin Dertli Dertli", whereas the first words on the slip are "Ne ağlarsın dertli dertli". Of the pieces recorded in Zigala that day, İnce Çayır Biçilmez and Allah Allah Dedik Ata Bindirdik entered the TRT repertoire.

Bibliography

Academic studies

Other sources

Online sources