Both the place and the date of this recording are estimates in the catalogue: Kaya gives them in square brackets as Merzifon, 8 July 1943. The wedding tune, whose card carries no line of text and whose name means "making the bride weep", was played for the team by the zurna player Osman Keleş and the drummer Hüseyin Duran, both listed in the catalogue's register of performers as coming from the village of Kızıleğrek in the Türnük subdistrict of Merzifon.

Catalogue Data

  • Repertoire no.: none; not registered under the Amasya region in the TRT repertoire
  • Place of collection: Merzifon (the cataloguer's estimate)
  • Source persons: Osman Keleş (zurna), Hüseyin Duran (davul)
  • Collected by: the Ankara State Conservatory team: Halil Bedii Yönetken, Muzaffer Sarısözen and the technician Rıza Yetişen
  • Date of collection: 8 July 1943 (the cataloguer's estimate)
  • Published source: Celal Volkan Kaya, Ankara Devlet Konservatuvarı'nın Halk Müziği Alan Araştırmaları Kataloğu (İTÜ, 2014), recording list no. 3639
  • Location in the archive: Folklore Archive, disc 1116/B-2 (with a question mark in the catalogue)
  • Genre: gelin ağlatma, wedding tune
  • Mode, rhythm: not recorded
  • Music: anonymous
  • Source link: there is no TRT page; the details are in Kaya's catalogue

Lyrics

None of the nine pieces Keleş and Duran gave the team has a line of text, and all are instrumental tunes such as halays, road tunes and wrestling tunes. From this it may be supposed that the pair were recorded as an instrumental group and that the gelin ağlatma, too, was played without words. Its notation appears in no publication. The melody is on the disc in the Folklore Archive that passed from the conservatory to Hacettepe University, and the copy of the card is among the collection documents held by TRT.

Collections and Variants

On the 1943 journey four separate gelin ağlatma pieces were recorded between Tokat and Amasya within two weeks. The first, on 26/27 June in Reşadiye, immediately after Kamil Kaya's recordings "Gelin Bindirme" and "Yol Havası", is a piece whose performer is not named in the catalogue and whose first line is not given. On 2 July in Zile Mahmut Sağlam sang a version with words beginning "Gelin Ağlatma: Biner atıñ eyisine". After the Merzifon recording, on 9 July in Gümüşhacıköy, Osman Atmaca also gave a piece of the same name. Whether these recordings are close to one another in melody cannot be known until their notations are published.

Story

That the recording was taken from two male performers adds something to the picture Nail Demircioğlu gives. Demircioğlu writes that ceremonial songs such as sung laments, henna-night songs, wedding songs and gelin ağlatma melodies are widespread among the women of Amasya; the Merzifon recording, for its part, may show that this melody was also played on the zurna at weddings. No account collected in the region was found of the moment at which, or the manner in which, the tune was played during the wedding.

Musical Features

The catalogue gives this gelin ağlatma the number 1116/B-2 with a question mark, because the same number also belongs to "Segah", taken from Zekeriya Demiray in Amasya on 6 July. The recordings of Keleş and Duran, for their part, are scattered over many discs, from 1113 to 1127. Kaya states that short recordings were made later in the spaces left empty at the ends of discs, and that dates on some discs therefore do not agree; the pair's scattered entries and bracketed dates fit this practice. No mode or metre was recorded.

Performers and Recordings

Besides this, Keleş and Duran played "Çerkes Halayı", "Bıçak(?) Oyun Havası", two "Yol Havası" tunes (karşılama and yürütme), "Saz(?) Halayı", "Güreş", "Kürt Halayı" and "Üç Ayak" for the team; no performance of the gelin ağlatma other than this 1943 recording is known. For the place of Merzifon's wedding and dance tunes within the province, see The Melody of Yeşilırmak.

Bibliography

Online sources