"Gene mihman geldi göynüm şad oldu": a line rejoicing at a guest's arrival stands at the head of the recordings dated 5 July 1943 in the Amasya village of Zigala. The minstrel Sadık Ayan of Uygur village sang the deyiş, and the conservatory team wrote the name "Hoş Geldiniz" (Welcome) on its card. Neither the rest of the words nor the melody passed into a printed source, and the TRT repertoire did not take up the piece.

Catalogue Data

  • Repertoire no.: none
  • Source person: Sadık Ayan; in the list of performers with the note "Âşıktır" (he is a minstrel), farmer, from the village of Uygur in the Ezine sub-district of central Amasya, year of birth on the card 1310 in the Rumi calendar (1894-1895); his instrument given in square brackets as saz
  • Place and date of collection: Zigala (today Aydınca) village, 5 July 1943
  • Collected by: Halil Bedii Yönetken, Muzaffer Sarısözen and the technician Rıza Yetişen (Ankara State Conservatory)
  • Genre: deyiş (devotional song)
  • Mode, rhythm: not recorded
  • Words and music: recorded as anonymous
  • Location in the archive: Folklore Archive, disc [1]107/A-1; the first digit of the number in square brackets in the catalogue, that is, completed by Kaya because it was missing or illegible on the card
  • Source publication: Kaya's catalogue, no. 3584 (İTÜ repository); there is no TRT link

Lyrics

Of the words on the card, the catalogue gives only the first line:

Gene mihman geldi göynüm şad oldu

"Mihman" is a word of Persian origin meaning guest; "göynüm" is the local pronunciation of "gönlüm", my heart, and "şad" means glad. In modern Turkish the line reads "Yine misafir geldi, gönlüm sevindi": "Once again a guest has come, my heart rejoiced." The word "gene", again, may hint that this was not the first visit, that an awaited and beloved guest was being welcomed once more. The rest of the deyiş exists neither in Kaya's lists nor in any other publication; today only the disc Ayan sang onto holds the whole of it, and that disc passed to Hacettepe with the former conservatory archive.

Story

The first possibility that comes to mind is the team itself: the team from Ankara was in Zigala that day, and a minstrel opening with a deyiş that welcomes guests could be read as a greeting to the village's visitors. The card says nothing of the kind, so the reading should remain an interpretation; the deyiş may equally be a piece sung for guests at cem or conversation gatherings in the village. No published information exists on the occasion for which it was sung. The conservatory archive holds similar titles from elsewhere: "Hoş Geldiniz Divanı [Cemali'den]", recorded in Çorum in 1939, and "Safa Geldiniz", beginning "Hû dedik irfane girdik", in Hacıbektaş in 1945. Since its words are unknown, no link can be drawn between the Zigala deyiş and these.

Musical Features

Because the saz is given in square brackets in the list of performers, even whether Ayan sang the deyiş with it is uncertain. The melody has never been put into notation anywhere, and there is no information on mode or rhythm.

Performers and Recordings

On disc 1107 the deyiş is followed by the minstrel's other three pieces: "Biz Dinî Batıl", "Bülbül" and "Kitabîden Bir Parça". No performance of the deyiş can be traced beyond this recording of Ayan's. Of the songs sung that day by Hüseyin Kılıç, from the same village, İnce Çayır Biçilmez and Gidiyom Deme Bana entered the TRT repertoire; "Kızılırmak", taken from Mehmet Hulusi Er in Zigala, also appears in the repertoire as Allah Allah Dedik Ata Bindirdik. For an overview of the deyiş and folk songs of Amasya, see The Melody of Yeşilırmak.

Bibliography

Online sources