A golden comb has been ordered on top of Karadağ: the only line of the song that reached the card opens with this small scene of a commission. The singer, Bektaş Yıldız, sang eight pieces for the collecting team when it stopped in Gümüşhacıköy on 9 July 1943; his name is linked with the village of Akpınar in Gümüşhacıköy. One of the pieces Yıldız sang that day entered the TRT repertoire, while this song has survived only through its entry in the catalogue.

Catalogue Data

  • Repertoire no.: none; not registered under the Amasya region in the TRT repertoire
  • Place and date of collection: Gümüşhacıköy, 9 July 1943
  • Source person: Bektaş Yıldız; in the index of performers his home is the village of Akpınar in Gümüşhacıköy
  • Collected by: Ankara State Conservatory (Halil Bedii Yönetken, Muzaffer Sarısözen, technician Rıza Yetişen)
  • Published source: Celal Volkan Kaya, Ankara Devlet Konservatuvarı'nın Halk Müziği Alan Araştırmaları Kataloğu (İTÜ, 2014), no. 3700
  • Location in the archive: Folklore Archive, disc 1132/B-1
  • Genre: folk song (türkü)
  • Mode, rhythm: unknown
  • Words and music: anonymous
  • Source link: no TRT link; the details are in Kaya's catalogue

Lyrics

Karadağ üstüne ısmarladım bir altın darak

"Darak" is the local pronunciation of tarak, comb, and "ısmarlamak" means to ask someone to make or bring something. The line reads "On top of Karadağ I ordered a golden comb." For whom the golden comb was wanted, and which mountain Karadağ is, cannot be drawn from a single line; the catalogue does not explain the name either. Neither the lines that would carry the story of the comb further nor a notation of the melody has been printed. The card is among those copied for TRT in the 1970s under the supervision of Nida Tüfekçi and Yücel Paşmakçı; disc 1132, which carries Yıldız's voice, is in the collection of the former Ankara State Conservatory Folklore Archive, now at Hacettepe University.

Story

No account of the song's making, in Akpınar or around Gümüşhacıköy, has been written down; from whose mouth and on what occasion it came is not known either.

Musical Features

No record of scale or rhythm exists; the disc, for its part, is given over entirely to one voice. All four recordings on disc 1132 are Bektaş Yıldız's: on side A "Fadimem" and "Toḫadıñ Mezerliği", on side B this song and "Neykerim (Bozuḫ)".

Performers and Recordings

Yıldız's voice of 1943 is the only recording of the song to have come down to us. "Toḫadıñ Mezerliği" on side A of the same disc is in the TRT repertoire as Tokat'ın Mezerliği. The second TRT work for which Yıldız is credited as source person is Bana Cevreyleyip Geyip Dokunma; its repertoire entry also links it to Akpınar. Gümüşhacıköy also appears, together with the other districts of the province, in The Melody of Yeşilırmak.

Bibliography

Online sources