This song, whose name recalls the bride being taken to the bath-house before the wedding, was taken from Fatma Samsun on 4 July 1943, the conservatory team's first working day in Amasya. The first line on the card is written "Gel göresim geldi seni". The place, date and disc number of the recording are in square brackets in the catalogue; the cataloguer supplied them by following the course of the journey and the order of the discs.

Catalogue Data

  • Repertoire no.: none; not registered under the Amasya region in the TRT repertoire
  • Place of collection: central Amasya (supplied by the cataloguer)
  • Source person: Fatma Samsun
  • Collected by: the Ankara State Conservatory team: Halil Bedii Yönetken, Muzaffer Sarısözen and the technician Rıza Yetişen
  • Date of collection: 4 July 1943 (supplied by the cataloguer)
  • Published source: Celal Volkan Kaya, Ankara Devlet Konservatuvarı'nın Halk Müziği Alan Araştırmaları Kataloğu (İTÜ, 2014), recording list no. 3583
  • Location in the archive: Folklore Archive, disc [1106/B-2]
  • Genre: folk song (wedding)
  • Mode, rhythm: not recorded
  • Words and music: anonymous
  • Source link: there is no TRT page; the details are in Kaya's catalogue

Lyrics

Gel göresim geldi seni

"Göresim gelmek" means to long to see someone; the line opens with a call, "Come, I have longed to see you". Whether the words are spoken by the bride or by the women taking her to the bath cannot be understood from one line.

The remaining lines appear in no publication. The text Fatma Samsun sang should be on TRT's copy of the card; the melody is preserved on disc 1106 of the Folklore Archive. In the years when Kaya was working, the archive was closed to use.

Story

All that is known of this song is that it belongs to the wedding repertoire; no account of how it came to be has been published. Henna-night songs, wedding songs and gelin ağlatma melodies, according to Nail Demircioğlu, are widespread among the women of Amasya. All three pieces Fatma Samsun sang that day come from this repertoire.

Musical Features

Judging by the order on the disc, side B of disc 1106 holds first Samsun's "Kına Havası: Âdemi Havvayı cennette yarattı" and then "Gelin Hamama Gidiyor". The disc number of this second recording is in square brackets; this is how Kaya marks cases where he corrected or completed the places, dates and numbers on the cards by looking at the journey as a whole and the order of the discs. On the scale and rhythm of the melody the card gives no information.

Performers and Recordings

The catalogue's list of performers gives Fatma Samsun's age as 70. The "Kına Havası" she sang was taken into the TRT repertoire and is the subject of the page Âdem Havva'yı Yarattı (Kına Havası); her third piece is "Gelini Ortaya Çıkarırken". The wedding songs taken from Naciye Perin in Amasya two days later also passed into the repertoire: Geline Bakın Geline (Kına Havası) and Sabah Oldu Kaynanam Geldi. No recording of "Gelin Hamama Gidiyor" after 1943 is known. The province's wedding songs are discussed together with its other melodies in The Melody of Yeşilırmak.

Bibliography

Online sources