On the disc, Çerkes Halayı has landed among songs sung in Amasya. Side A of disc 1113 begins with a koşma and a "Garip Makamı" sung by Osman Çevikçe in Amasya on 6 July 1943; in third place comes this halay, played on zurna and davul by Osman Keleş and Hüseyin Duran, and side B opens again with Çevikçe's "Kalenderi". Kaya, setting it apart from the other recordings, gave the halay's place and day in square brackets as Merzifon and 8 July 1943.

Catalogue Data

  • Repertoire no.: none; not registered in the TRT repertoire under the Amasya region
  • Source persons (players): Osman Keleş (zurna player, Rumi 1330), Hüseyin Duran (davul player, Rumi 1331), from the village of Kızıleğrek in the Türnük district of Merzifon
  • Place of collection: Merzifon (the cataloguer's estimate)
  • Date of collection: 8 July 1943 (the cataloguer's estimate)
  • Collected by: the Ankara State Conservatory team: Halil Bedii Yönetken, Muzaffer Sarısözen and the technician Rıza Yetişen
  • Source publication: Celal Volkan Kaya, Ankara Devlet Konservatuvarı'nın Halk Müziği Alan Araştırmaları Kataloğu (İTÜ, 2014), no. 3622
  • Location in the archive: Folklore Archive, disc 1113/A-3
  • Genre: halay, instrumental
  • Mode, rhythm: not written on the card
  • Music: anonymous
  • Regional attribution: disputed; its name recalls the Circassian halay tradition, while it was collected in Amasya province from musicians of Merzifon
  • Source link: Kaya, 2014; there is no TRT link

Lyrics

The space for words on the card is empty; this is a davul and zurna halay. Its notation was found neither in a folk music collection nor in the studies made on Amasya. The melody itself is preserved together with disc 1113 in the Folklore Archive at the State Conservatory of Hacettepe University; the card information passed into the catalogue from the copies TRT obtained in the 1970s.

Name and Attribution

The name recalls the Circassian communities of Caucasian origin. The pair who played it for the team, however, came from a village of Merzifon, and the performer list carries no note on a migrant origin for either, although Kaya says he wrote the original home towns of performers who had come from elsewhere and settled in the collecting area separately in the notes column. The name does not occur again in the catalogue. No printed information could be found on where in and around Merzifon, and among whom, a halay of this name was danced; whether the name marks a community or a style of dance therefore stays open.

Story

No tradition about the halay's place in Merzifon has made it onto paper. Even the place and day now attached to the recording are an inference: Kaya writes that in correcting recording places and dates he also took into account the general route of the tour and the performers' home towns. The halay's place and day stand in square brackets in the catalogue; what place and date are written on the card itself cannot be told from the catalogue.

Musical Features

According to Kaya's performer list, Keleş played the zurna and Duran the davul. All nine pieces the pair played for the team are instrumental, and three are halays: this one, "Saz(?) Halayı" and a "Kürt Halayı" whose sections are listed as ağırlama, yanlama and yeldirme. The title of Çerkes Halayı carries no such section names; its scale and rhythm are not recorded either.

Performers and Recordings

The sources mention no other performance of the halay. The Osman Çevikçe recording that precedes it on the disc is described under the title Garip Makamı, and another of the pair's pieces under Gelin Ağlatma, on separate pages. Amasya's halays and other dance tunes are also touched on in The Melody of Yeşilırmak.

Bibliography

Online sources