Someone seen with a water jug in hand: that is the whole scene the name gives, and the rest of the song is unknown. The genre table in Haluk Yücel's 2018 article opens with five songs familiar from the TRT repertoire; the sixth row is "Elinde su testisi" (a water jug in hand), and it is the table's first name to come from outside TRT. Yücel counts it with the kırık hava, songs in a fixed metre, and in the metre column he marks 9/8.

Catalogue Data

  • Repertoire no.: none; the piece is not in the TRT repertoire under Amasya
  • Genre: kırık hava (folk song in a fixed metre)
  • Region: Amasya
  • Source person: unknown
  • Collector and transcriber: unknown
  • Place and date of collection: not given
  • Makam (mode): not given
  • Metre: 9/8
  • Words and music: anonymous
  • Source publication: Haluk Yücel 2018, Table 5 p. 378, Table 6 p. 381
  • Location in an archive: the author does not show his source piece by piece
  • Source link: Yücel's study (PDF); there is no TRT link

Lyrics

Beyond this three-word name there is nothing in hand; neither words nor notation have made it into a printed source. In another article on Amasya folk songs, written in 2023, Yücel lists the sources he consulted: the TRT Turkish folk music archive, the Amasya Türküleri CD prepared by the TRT Music Department, and the book Amasya Türküleri printed by Amasya Municipality. The 2018 article has no such list, and in which of those three sources, or elsewhere, this song is found remains unclear. The contents of the CD and the book could not be reached online.

Story

The sources hold no tale of the person going to the water or coming back from it with a jug, and no tradition about how the song was composed. Until the full words come to light, even the subject of the song cannot go beyond guesswork.

Musical Features

In Yücel's metre table 9/8 and 9/4 are gathered into one column, and this song's asterisk stands in it. By the article's count 12 songs are written in this metre; with that number 9/8 is the third largest metre group in Yücel's listing. Because the table does not separate 9/8 from 9/4, it cannot be said with certainty which of the two the song is written in, and neither its mode nor its range is stated.

Performers and Recordings

A jug is at the centre of a scene in the Amasya songs of the TRT repertoire as well: Kız Pınar Başında Testi Doldurur also stands in the 9/8 column of Yücel's table. No source shows whether the two songs are related. No singer's name, record or published sound recording of "Elinde Su Testisi" has been found. For an introduction to the melodies of Amasya, The Melody of Yeşilırmak can be read.

Bibliography

Online sources