The title on the card, "Garip Makamı", points two ways: Garip may be the name of a minstrel, or the name of a type of long song. Osman Çevikçe put this piece on disc in Amasya on 6 July 1943 as the second of the three he sang for the team. The line written on the card, "Seni ugvan(?) bihiştten mi gaçırmış", likens the beloved to a beauty stolen away from paradise. The long song is not in the TRT repertoire, and its notation has not been published.

Catalogue Data

  • Repertoire no.: none; not registered under the Amasya region in the TRT repertoire
  • Place of collection: central Amasya (in square brackets in the catalogue, supplied by the cataloguer)
  • Source person: Osman Çevikçe
  • Collected by: the Ankara State Conservatory team: Halil Bedii Yönetken, Muzaffer Sarısözen and the technician Rıza Yetişen
  • Date of collection: 6 July 1943
  • Published source: Celal Volkan Kaya, Ankara Devlet Konservatuvarı'nın Halk Müziği Alan Araştırmaları Kataloğu (İTÜ, 2014), recording list no. 3621
  • Location in the archive: Folklore Archive, disc 1113/A-2
  • Genre: long song (minstrel makam)
  • Mode, rhythm: not recorded
  • Words: attributed to Garip according to the title; the name may also denote a type of melody. Music anonymous
  • Source link: there is no TRT page; the details are in Kaya's catalogue

Lyrics

Seni ugvan(?) bihiştten mi gaçırmış

"Bihişt" is Persian for paradise; the line is understood as "Did ... steal you away from paradise?" The cataloguer could not read the word marked with a question mark with any confidence. It may be a corrupted spelling of Rıdvan, the name of the angel who keeps the gate of paradise; the line would then mean something like "Did Rıdvan steal you away from paradise?" This reading cannot be confirmed without seeing the card.

The rest of the words was never printed. The text Çevikçe sang may be sought among the copies of the cards brought to TRT in the 1970s under the supervision of Nida Tüfekçi and Yücel Paşmakçı; his voice remains on disc 1113 of the Folklore Archive.

Story

Garip is the name of Âşık Garip, hero of the folk romance, and the songs attributed to him live on in the minstrels' repertoire. On the other hand, when Haluk Yücel lists the names given to long songs in different regions of Turkey, he mentions "garip" alongside bozlak, maya, kerem and hoyrat. The word "makam" on the card may describe a melodic pattern; the Merzifon cards of the same journey also carry titles such as "Yayla Makamı" and "Dik Delil Makamı". No published record was found of when or for whom the long song was sung.

Musical Features

According to the definition Yücel cites, an uzun hava is free in metre and rhythm, yet has a known scale, follows its course within set patterns and is sung in a speech-like manner. That the card records neither metre nor range is partly explained by this definition; yet although its title says "makam", the card names no scale either. Which of these patterns Garip Makamı follows cannot be said without hearing the disc.

Performers and Recordings

The catalogue's list of performers records Osman Çevikçe as a hoca, a religious teacher, from central Amasya, gives his instrument in square brackets as the saz, and notes that he learned the saz from Âşık Bedrî of Erbaa, one of the apprentices of Erzurumlu Emrah. The three pieces he sang that day reflect this circle: "Nuriden Bir Parça (Koşma): Aramızı garlı dağlar alupdur", "Garip Makamı" and "Kalenderi [Emrah'tan]: Sofi meclise hele diñle bu sazı". The day before, in Zigala, a piece titled "Mersiye (Garip'ten)" was taken from Davut Aslan and Mehmet İnan; the meaning of the name Garip in that recording is discussed on the page Kaf u Nun Hitabı İzhar Olmadan. No one is known to have sung this long song after Çevikçe. The Melody of Yeşilırmak offers a general view of Amasya's tradition of long songs.

Bibliography

Online sources