Osman Atmaca's kaval was 92 centimetres long. As the collectors listened to him in Gümüşhacıköy on 9 July 1943, they also noted the measurements of the instrument on the slip: an inner width of 18 millimetres, an outer width of 2.4 centimetres. Celal Volkan Kaya's catalogue reproduces these notes together with a drawing showing the structure of the kaval. Atmaca played six instrumental tunes that day, and "Davarı Suya İndirme", taking the flock down to water, is the first of them. There is no TRT notation of the piece, and it has not been published anywhere else.

Catalogue Data

  • Repertoire no.: none; it is not registered to Amasya in the TRT repertoire
  • Region: Gümüşhacıköy (the place of recording is written plainly on the slip)
  • Source performer: Osman Atmaca, kaval; birth year on the slip Rumi 1329 (about 1913), farm labourer, from Derbentopruğu village in the Saraycık district of Gümüşhacıköy
  • Collected by: Halil Bedii Yönetken, Muzaffer Sarısözen and the technician Rıza Yetişen (Ankara State Conservatory)
  • Date of collection: 9 July 1943
  • Archive location: former Ankara State Conservatory Folklore Archive (now at the Hacettepe University State Conservatory), record 1136/A-2; no. 3717 in Kaya's catalogue
  • Genre: shepherd's tune, instrumental (kaval)
  • Mode, metre: unknown
  • Music: anonymous
  • Source link: there is no TRT link; the catalogue data and kaval notes are in Kaya's catalogue thesis
  • Overview article: The Melody of the Yeşilırmak

Lyrics

A wordless kaval tune, it has nothing on the slip beyond its name, and no printed notation has been found. On the record it comes on side A of no. 1136, after a deyiş by Pir Sultan Abdal recorded the same day.

Story

The name describes the moment when the shepherd brings the flock down from the pasture to the water. No story tied to the Gümüşhacıköy recording has been published, but the spread of the same name across the collection slips shows what kind of tune it was. The conservatory teams recorded "Davarın Suya İndirilmesi" and "Davarın Suya İndirilme ve Döndürülmesi" in Sivas in 1937, and tunes of similar name in Erzurum the same year, in Gaziantep in 1938 and in Çorum in 1939; in 1941 they recorded "Davarı Suya İndirme ve Döndürme" at the Öküz Çukuru pasture near Kayseri, and in 1944 pieces bearing the same name in Bingöl, Palu and Muş. Beside the Bingöl and Palu recordings there are titles such as "Sabahdan Davarı Yörütme" (driving the flock out in the morning) and "Davarı Kaldırma (Yataktan)" (raising the flock from its resting place); these suggest a series of tunes describing a shepherd's day stage by stage. Whether Atmaca's recording was part of such a series, the slip does not say.

Musical Features

The scale in which the tune was played is unknown. The only technical data available concern the instrument itself: a length of 92 centimetres, an inner width of 18 millimetres and an outer width of 2.4 centimetres. The two other kavals whose length is written out in the catalogue's section on instrument notes allow a comparison: the brass kaval noted in Rize in 1937 measured 69 centimetres, the kaval noted in Kozan, probably in 1941, 68. Atmaca's instrument was longer than these by roughly a hand's span.

Performers and Recordings

The tunes Osman Atmaca played that day went onto the records in this order: "Davarı Suya İndirme", "Bozuh", "Yavré", "Gelin Ağlatma", "Oyun Havası" and "Gırnata Havası". The "Davarı Suya" played by Ömer Canaz in Havza the next day is among the recordings of the same journey. Immediately after Atmaca, the songs of young Nuri Uysal from the same village went onto the records; one of them is described on the Bülbül (Bülbülün Ganedi Yeşil) page.

Bibliography

Online sources