Its title is a kitchen command: put the keşkek in the oven. Keşkek, in which pounded wheat and meat are cooked together, appears in the title of this song at the moment before the meal, as it goes into the oven. In the tables where Haluk Yücel sorted eighty-nine Amasya songs by type and metre, "Keşkeği vur fırına" is counted among the kırık havas, and its metre is given as 4/4. No text belonging to the song has been published; but a quatrain opening with the same words occurs in a series of manis, short folk quatrains, registered to the Amasya region.

Catalogue Data

  • Repertoire no.: none; there is no work of this name in the Amasya section of the TRT repertoire
  • Region: Amasya
  • Type: kırık hava (Yücel 2018, Table 5)
  • Metre: 4/4 (Yücel 2018, Table 6)
  • Mode (makam): not stated
  • Source performer, collector, date of collection: not in the source
  • Words and music: anonymous
  • Links: no TRT link; Yücel's article; the mani series containing the quatrain that opens with the same words is on Türkü Yurdu

Lyrics

The row in the table holds a title and nothing more; neither a score nor a full text has been printed. The quatrain that opens with the same line is given below, in the section Collections and Variants, but no document shows that it belongs to this song.

Story

The title does not say for which table the keşkek was being sent to the oven. Nor has any tradition been recorded that ties the song to a particular event or person.

Musical Features

In Yücel's metre table 4/4 is the most crowded column: 28 of the 89 works are shown in this four-beat metre. "Keşkeği vur fırına" stands on the last page of the table, between "Yeşil akar Amasya'nın ırmağı" and "Sana bir nasihat edeyim gönül". Since the makam is not given song by song, the song's scale is unknown; and as no notation has been published, nothing can be said about its range or form.

Performers and Recordings

The name of a singer who performed the song could not be found. Because Yücel's tables do not show which recording each song was taken from, it cannot be traced whether this work rests on a radio recording or on an album. The online mani series, too, is published as "anonymous" and carries no singer's name.

Collections and Variants

The mani series "Irmaktan Geçemiyom", registered to the Amasya region, consists of eight stanzas. Its sixth stanza runs:

Keşkeği vur fırına
Pişiversin yarına
Yalnız yeme sevdiğim
Haber sal dostlarına

In English: put the keşkek in the oven, let it cook for tomorrow; my love, do not eat alone, send word to your friends as well. The other stanzas of the series mention Amasya's apples, bubbling samovars and the grass by the river. Whether the "Keşkeği vur fırına" in Yücel's table is a part of this series sung on its own, or a separate song opening with the same line, no record shows. In the same table Yücel also counts "Amasya'nın elması" and "Samâveri hâlleyleyin" as separate works. For a general survey of Amasya's melodies see The Melody of Yeşilırmak.

Bibliography

Online sources