In the Merzifon recordings of 1943 Rasim Olgun's name mostly appears within an instrumental group; "Gel Gönül Gidelim", however, is one of the pieces he sang alone, on 7 July. Olgun, from the village of Sarı in Merzifon, is listed as a violinist in the conservatory's list of performers. The song, which opens "Gel göñül gidelim dost éllerine", stayed outside the TRT repertoire, and no printed text or notation of it exists.

Catalogue Data

  • Repertoire no.: none; not registered under the Amasya region in the TRT repertoire
  • Place of collection: Merzifon
  • Source person: Rasim Olgun (Merzifon, village of Sarı; violin)
  • Collected by: the Ankara State Conservatory team: Halil Bedii Yönetken, Muzaffer Sarısözen and the technician Rıza Yetişen
  • Date of collection: 7 July 1943
  • Published source: Celal Volkan Kaya, Ankara Devlet Konservatuvarı'nın Halk Müziği Alan Araştırmaları Kataloğu (İTÜ, 2014), recording list no. 3655
  • Location in the archive: Folklore Archive, disc 1120/B-1
  • Genre: minstrel song (deyiş)
  • Mode, rhythm: not recorded
  • Words and music: anonymous
  • Source link: there is no TRT page; the details are in Kaya's catalogue

Lyrics

Gel göñül gidelim dost éllerine

The line addresses the heart: "Come, my heart, let us go to the lands of the friend." In folk poetry the friend, "dost", can mean the beloved, while in Sufi expression it also names God; the remaining lines would have shown in which sense the song was composed. The ñ and é in the spelling are signs the collectors used to put local pronunciation on paper: one marks the nasal n, the other the closed e.

The other lines, which would show which sense was meant, have passed into no published source. The text is most likely carried by the duplicate card prepared for TRT; Olgun's voice is in the Folklore Archive, at the start of side B of disc 1120.

Story

Whether the words belong to a minstrel whose name has been forgotten, or whether this is a song handed down orally in the villages of Merzifon, cannot be drawn from a single line. There is no printed information on when or for whom it was sung either.

Musical Features

Olgun being a violinist raises the question of whether he sang the song to his own violin accompaniment. Some of the Merzifon cards note that "a violin was played", and in a footnote Kaya states that in these recordings the violin must have been played either by Olgun or by Tanrısever. The card for "Gel Gönül Gidelim" carries no such note, nor does it give a mode or metre; so neither the presence of an accompaniment nor its instrument is known.

Performers and Recordings

Disc 1120 offers a small cross-section of that day's Merzifon repertoire: side A holds Olgun's "Eser Yel (Halay)", Hüseyin Onkar's "Bir Kız ile Bir Oğlan" and a dance tune by Osman Keleş and Hüseyin Duran; side B holds this song and, again from Onkar, "Sümmanî'den (Karacaoğlan)". Three of these recordings passed into the TRT repertoire and are discussed on the pages Gidersen Göndereyim, Ben De Çıktım Fodullu'nun Üstüne and Eğlen Sana Bir Nasihat Edeyim. The song itself is known from no performance other than Olgun's 1943 recording. Olgun's other solo recording is Pınarın Başına Taş Ben Olayım, and the melodies of Merzifon are covered in The Melody of Yeşilırmak.

Bibliography

Online sources