Two names are written in the performers' field of this nefes's slip: Şükrü Topçu, a farmer from Amasya, and Muzaffer Sarısözen, a member of the collecting team. Among the 1943 Amasya recordings in Kaya's catalogue, this is the only piece in which one of the collectors appears as a performer; whether Sarısözen sang, played the saz or merely prompted Topçu with a line is not recorded. The recording was made in Amasya on 6 July 1943, and its first line went onto the slip as "Elif Allah adı". The nefes is absent from the TRT repertoire, and nothing of its words or notation has been published.

Catalogue Data

  • Repertoire no.: none; it is not registered to Amasya in the TRT repertoire
  • Region: central Amasya (place of recording given in square brackets in the catalogue)
  • Source performer: Şükrü Topçu, farmer, from central Amasya; no birth year on the slip. Muzaffer Sarısözen is entered on the slip as a second performer
  • Collected by: Ankara State Conservatory: Halil Bedii Yönetken, Muzaffer Sarısözen, Rıza Yetişen
  • Date of collection: 6 July 1943
  • Archive location: former Ankara State Conservatory Folklore Archive (now at the Hacettepe University State Conservatory), record 1115/A-2 (?); no. 3630 in Kaya's catalogue
  • Genre: nefes
  • Mode, metre: unknown
  • Words and music: recorded as anonymous
  • Source link: there is no TRT link; the data are in Kaya's 2014 catalogue
  • Overview article: The Melody of the Yeşilırmak

Lyrics

Elif Allah adı

The nefes opens with the first letter of the Arabic alphabet and ties it to the name of God, "elif is the name of Allah"; the piece's name on the slip, "Elif", comes from this. Whether the text went on giving a meaning to each letter in turn cannot be said, as the second line is unknown. The remainder of the text and its notation are not to be found in print. The place of the recording on the record is not certain either: the cataloguer gives the number as "1115/A-2 (?)", because the same number is also written for Arzu Ballar's "Gönül Der ki", entered just before it.

Story

To which poet the nefes belonged, and at which gatherings in Amasya it was sung, the slip is silent. Printed sources say nothing either about this recording or about where the nefes came from.

Musical Features

There are no data at all on the tune. The performers' list does not record Şükrü Topçu as playing an instrument, and since Sarısözen's part in the recording also remains unclear, it cannot be known whether the nefes was sung with the saz.

Performers and Recordings

Şükrü Topçu's name appears in the catalogue on this recording alone. The same day, the same series of records took in Garip Hüseyin's songs, Arzu Ballar's "Gönül Der ki", Evleri Görünüyor, sung by Mehmet Kemeroğlu and later entered in the TRT repertoire, and Zekeriya Demiray's pieces. Of the nefes, this is the only recording known.

Bibliography

Online sources