On the collection card of this piece the title does not stand alone: beside "Engin Hüseynî", in parentheses, someone wrote the description "the oldest tarikat makam", that is, the oldest melody of a Sufi order. Rüstem Coşar sang it for the conservatory team's disc in Merzifon on 8 July 1943. What remains of the piece is the line entered on the card, "Gayriye nazar gılma gel âdeme baḫ". The TRT repertoire did not take it up, and its notation and words have been printed nowhere.

Catalogue Data

  • Repertoire no.: none; not registered under the Amasya region in the TRT repertoire
  • Place of collection: Merzifon
  • Source person: Rüstem Coşar
  • Collected by: the Ankara State Conservatory team: Halil Bedii Yönetken, Muzaffer Sarısözen and the technician Rıza Yetişen
  • Date of collection: 8 July 1943
  • Published source: Celal Volkan Kaya, Ankara Devlet Konservatuvarı'nın Halk Müziği Alan Araştırmaları Kataloğu (İTÜ, 2014), recording list no. 3667
  • Location in the archive: Folklore Archive, disc 1124/A-1
  • Genre: long song (uzun hava); described on the card as "the oldest tarikat makam"
  • Mode, rhythm: no analysis on the card; the title contains the name Hüseynî
  • Words and music: anonymous
  • Source link: there is no TRT page; the details are in Kaya's catalogue

Lyrics

Gayriye nazar gılma gel âdeme baḫ

Written in the local dialect, the line can be read in modern Turkish as "Gayra nazar kılma, gel Âdem'e bak": do not look upon the other, come and look at Adam, that is, at man. In the language of Sufism "gayr" means everything other than God; the counsel is to turn one's gaze away from outward things and towards the human being. This may be the meaning the text yields, but with only one line at hand, any reading of the whole in this direction is no more than a guess. The letter ḫ in "baḫ" is the catalogue's equivalent of the sign Sarısözen used for the thick, guttural h of local speech.

Because Kaya's catalogue gives nothing beyond the first line, how the counsel continues is unknown, and no notation has been printed either. The text remains among the copies of the collection cards made for TRT, and Coşar's voice on disc 1124 of the archive that passed to the State Conservatory of Hacettepe University.

Story

What the phrase "the oldest tarikat makam" rests on, in which order and at which ceremony the melody was sung, is not explained on the card, and nothing on the subject was found in printed sources. On the same day in Merzifon Aşir Kirpiksiz also sang a piece entered on the card as "Dik Delil Makamı (Tarikatın Dik Delili)". The emphasis on the Sufi order in both recordings suggests that the team reached the melodies of a dervish circle in Merzifon. Which path the source persons belonged to, however, is not documented.

Musical Features

Both words of the title look like the name of a melody. In the conservatory's Çukurova recordings the titles "Engin Hava – Karacaoğlan" (Adana, 1938), "Karacoğlan Engin Havası" (Feke, 1941) and "Bulanık Bozlak (Engini)" (Ceyhan, 1941) occur; there "engin" names a type of long song. Whether the word on the Merzifon card carries the same meaning is unknown. Hüseynî, for its part, is one of the scales most often used in the folk songs of Amasya: in Haluk Yücel's count it comes third, after Uşşak and Hicaz. As the card gives no modal analysis, whether the melody really belongs to this scale, and what its metre and range are, cannot be determined without hearing the disc.

Performers and Recordings

Rüstem Coşar gave the team three pieces that day. The first, sung together with Mehmet Çelen and filling side B of disc 1123, is "Koşuye(?) Makamı"; this song entered the TRT repertoire and is discussed on the page Dedem Beni Bir Bahçeye Gönderdi. Then "Engin Hüseynî" and after it "Kandilli Kerem: Ervahı ezelden bir gözel sevdim" were recorded on side A of disc 1124. No one is known to have sung this melody after Coşar. The minstrel and dervish melodies of Merzifon are among the subjects of The Melody of Yeşilırmak, which introduces the province's whole repertoire.

Bibliography

Online sources