With a name ending in "anam", my mother, this long song addresses its words to a mother: the mountains have seared me, burned me as if with a red-hot iron. It is one of the seven pieces marked as uzun hava, free-rhythm long songs, in Haluk Yücel's article published in 2018, which classifies 89 Amasya folk songs by genre and metre, and three of those seven names call on a mother: "Anam Ağlar", "Ana ben gediyom ele" and this piece. Yücel's table holds nothing about it beyond its name, genre and metre.

Catalogue Data

  • Repertoire no.: none; it is not among the long songs registered to Amasya by TRT
  • Genre: uzun hava (long song)
  • Region: Amasya (district not stated)
  • Source person: not given
  • Collector and transcriber: not given
  • Date of collection: none
  • Makam (mode): not written
  • Metre: free
  • Words and music: anonymous
  • Source publication: Haluk Yücel 2018, Table 5 (p. 380) and Table 6 (p. 384)
  • Where it is kept: not shown in the article
  • Source link: Yücel's article; no TRT link

Lyrics

Of the words, nothing has reached us beyond the complaint in the name, and no score of the tune has been published. The catalogue of the melodies the conservatory collectors recorded on disc in Amasya, Merzifon, Zigala and Gümüşhacıköy in the summer of 1943 does not contain this title. Since Yücel does not say which collection he relied on, the trail to the full text breaks off here.

Story

No published information tells who the person complaining of the mountains to their mother was, or whether the long song was sung over a death, exile or separation. All that remains are the first words of a lament, and the event behind them has not been recorded.

Musical Features

As a tune sung without a fixed measure, the piece stands in the "free" column of the metre table. All seven of the works Yücel counts as long songs are in this column; the same column also holds Kışlanın Üstünde Kurdum İskele, the only long song of Amasya in the TRT repertoire, although in the genre table Yücel entered that piece in the kırık hava column. There is no record to consult for its mode or range.

Performers and Recordings

The last rows of the genre table are given over to the long songs: "Anam Ağlar", "Viran Dağlar", "Kızılırmak", "Üç Gün Önce Gördüm", "Yüce dağ", "Dağlar dağladı beni anam" and "Ana ben gediyom ele". No performer is written in the table for any of them, and no trace has been found of a voice singing this long song on record, cassette or broadcast. The general frame of Amasya's long song and folk song tradition is drawn in the general article on the region's melodies.

Bibliography

Online sources