In the line that reached the card the word "yarin", the beloved's, comes twice in a row: "Yarin efkârından yarin gamınden." This Kırklar semah is the second of two that Davut Aslan sang to his saz in the village of Zigala on 5 July 1943, and the card names it together with its sections: ağırlama and yeldirme. It was recorded on side A of disc 1110, immediately after the same singer's "Gönüller Semahı". That first semah in time entered the TRT repertoire; the notation of this one has been published nowhere.

Catalogue Data

  • Repertoire no.: none; not registered under the Amasya region in the TRT repertoire
  • Source person: Davut Aslan (saz; born Rumi 1308, i.e. 1892-1893; farmer; central Amasya, Ezine subdistrict, village of Girap)
  • Place and date of collection: village of Zigala (today Aydınca), Amasya; 5 July 1943 (place and date in square brackets in the catalogue)
  • Collected by: Halil Bedii Yönetken, Muzaffer Sarısözen and the technician Rıza Yetişen (Ankara State Conservatory)
  • Genre: semah; sections ağırlama and yeldirme
  • Mode, rhythm: not recorded
  • Words and music: registered as anonymous
  • Location in the archive: Folklore Archive, disc 1110/A-2 (disc number in square brackets in the catalogue)
  • Source publication and link: Kaya's catalogue, no. 3601; full text of the thesis. There is no TRT link

Lyrics

Yarin efkârından yarin gamınden

The line reads "yârin efkârından, yârin gamından", that is, "from the worry the beloved gives, from the sorrow of the beloved". The spelling "gamınden" is a trace of the collectors' care to put the pronunciation onto the card just as they heard it. The sentence breaks off here; the line that would say what came of this sorrow is not in the catalogue, because Kaya, in preparing his lists, deliberately left out the words of the pieces and introduced each recording only by its title and first line. Nor is the full text of the semah in any publication. Davut Aslan's voice is on disc 1110 of the Folklore Archive, now held at the State Conservatory of Hacettepe University; a copy of the card is at TRT.

Story

From whom Aslan learned this semah, and at which cem gatherings in Zigala it was performed, finds no place in the printed sources. The day itself can be followed clearly from the team's itinerary: they reached Amasya on 4 July, went on to the village of Zigala the next day and returned to the town on 6 July. Davut Aslan, who came from the village of Girap in the Ezine subdistrict, did not sing only semahs that day; together with Mehmet İnan from the same village he also put deyiş, laments and folk songs on disc.

Musical Features

The card gives no mode or metre; the only clue to the melody lies in the title. The phrase "ağırlama ve yeldirme" shows that the semah was performed in two sections, whereas the title of "Gönüller Semahı", first on the same disc, mentions only "ağırlama". The length of the sections, and where the slow part gives way to the fast one, cannot be known without listening to the disc. According to the list of performers, Aslan played the saz in the recording.

Performers and Recordings

"Gönüller Semahı", taken from Aslan at the same session, entered the TRT repertoire under the title Yüce Dağ Başında Koyun Güderken; this Kırklar semah, by contrast, stands alone with its performance on the 1943 disc. A Kırklar semah collected from Musa Aslan also stands in the repertoire, as Geldiğiniz Evler Dolu Olsun Nurdan; its first line is wholly different from that of the Zigala semah. A broad view of the region's semahs, deyiş and folk songs is given in The Melody of Yeşilırmak.

Bibliography

Online sources