The last five of the eight lines end on the same word, and the very last is the profession of God's unity itself: "La ilahe illallah", there is no god but God. This short hymn in the Rast mode uses the language of a lover addressing the beloved, calling God both "can" (soul, life) and "cânan" (beloved). It was collected from the voice of the mevlid reciter Hacı Asiye Akbaş and stands, with its score, among the appendices of Fatih Koca's 2015 article. In the article's list its name is written "Can Can Allah Cânan Allah"; in the title of the score and in the words beneath it, however, the word appears as "Cenan".

Catalogue Data

  • Repertoire no.: none; the piece is not registered to Amasya in the TRT repertoire
  • Genre: ilahi, a religious hymn (score title "Rast İlahi - Can Can Allah Cenan Allah")
  • Region: Amasya (city centre)
  • Source person: Hacı Asiye Akbaş, mevlid reciter; Ayşe Candaş also took part in the performance
  • Collected by: Osman Akbaş (the source person's son) and Fatih Koca
  • Transcribed by: Eren Köksal, revising the collection
  • Date of collection: not written; the interview in the article took place in Amasya at the Ramadan Bayram of 2013
  • Makam (mode): Rast
  • Metre and tempo: 6/8, crotchet = 80
  • Words and music: anonymous
  • Source publication: Koca 2015, list p. 937 (fourth item), score p. 942
  • Location in an archive: where the collection recording is kept is not mentioned in the article
  • Source link: Koca's article; there is no TRT link

Lyrics

Tesbih çekerim nazınla
Türlü türlü avazınla
Cennette huri kızınan
Can Can Allah Cenan Allah
Bu can sana kurban Allah
Her dertlere Derman Allah
Son Nefeste İman Allah
La ilahe illallah

The words are printed below the score as a single block, and no other stanza is given. In English: I tell my prayer beads, with your grace, with your many voices; in paradise with the houri maiden. O God who is soul, O God who is beloved; this soul is a sacrifice to you, you are the cure for every trouble, faith at the last breath comes from you; there is no god but God. "Kızınan" is the dialect pronunciation of "kızıyla", "with the maiden". The source does not explain whose coquetry or grace the "nazınla" of the first line points to, or whose voice is meant by the "avazınla" of the second; taken on their own, the first three lines can therefore be read in two ways, as describing either the singer's own beads and voice or the grace of someone addressed. "Cânan" is the word, of Persian origin, that divan poetry used for the beloved; the hymn sets it beside "can" and turns it towards God.

Story

The score gives "anonymous" for both words and music, and no tradition about how the hymn came to be sung has been published. Behind the collection that took the tune from Akbaş's memory, though, lies a memory on the edge of loss. Akbaş told Koca that because she kept the hymns she sang in her memory she had never written them down, and that as she grew older she forgot some of them. Years later she copied part of what she still remembered into an "İlahi Defteri", a hymn notebook of her own, and said with regret that some pieces she used to sing she could no longer recall. Whether this hymn was among those written into the notebook is not stated.

Musical Features

The sixteen-bar melody is woven from two short phrases. The first is a two-bar phrase that sets off from Sol and leaps to the Sol an octave above, and it carries the lines "Tesbih çekerim nazınla" and "Cennette huri kızınan"; each is sung a second time before the repeat sign. The second phrase starts on Mi and descends step by step to rest on Sol; "Türlü türlü avazınla" and all the lines ending in "Allah", and finally "La ilahe illallah", are set to these same two bars. It is written in 6/8 with the crotchet at 80; the key signature carries an F sharp, and the melody ends on Sol, the final of Rast. Its range does not exceed an octave. The article does not say whether the piece was sung at gatherings by one person or by the company together.

Performers and Recordings

The voices in the collection are those of Asiye Akbaş and Ayşe Candaş. Osman Akbaş, one of the collectors, is Asiye Hanım's son, born in 1970; trained as a ney player, he headed the Turkish Sufi music department of the Amasya Municipal Conservatory. According to Koca, the Amasya hymns collected by Burhan Özbakır were also rearranged by Osman Akbaş and Koca and published on CD by Amasya Municipality in 2012 as part of Ubeydullah Sezikli's "İlahi Anadolu" project. Whether "Can Can Allah Cânan Allah" is on that CD is not known, since the album's list of pieces could not be traced. The province's other melodies can be read together in the article The Melody of Yeşilırmak.

Bibliography

Online sources