"Bu cihan halkından umma ihsanı": a line of counsel telling the listener to expect no kindness from the people of this world, it opens the last of the four pieces Sadık Ayan sang in Zigala on 5 July 1943. The title ties the poem to a poet's name. As in titles such as "Karacaoğlandan" and "Nuriden Bir Parça" on the cards of the same tour, a name given with the suffix "-den" ("from") marks the owner of the poem; here that name is Kitâbî. The catalogue does not say who this poet with the pen name Kitâbî was. The TRT repertoire did not take the deyiş in, and its words and melody were never printed.

Catalogue Data

  • Repertoire no.: none; not registered under the Amasya region in the TRT repertoire
  • Place and date of collection: Zigala (Aydınca) village, central Amasya; 5 July 1943
  • Source person: Sadık Ayan; in the list of performers his home is the village of Uygur in the Ezine sub-district, with the card's note "He is a minstrel (âşık)."
  • Collected by: the Ankara State Conservatory collecting team: 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. 3587
  • Location in the archive: Folklore Archive, disc 1107/B-2
  • Genre: deyiş
  • Mode, rhythm: not written
  • Words and music: words by a poet with the pen name Kitâbî according to the title; melody anonymous
  • Source link: there is no TRT page; the details are in Kaya's catalogue

Lyrics

Bu cihan halkından umma ihsanı

"Cihan halkı" means the people of the world, "ihsan" kindness or bounty. The line means "Expect no kindness from the people of this world"; whether the poet is addressing himself or the listener cannot be told from a single line. The words appear neither in Kaya's catalogue nor in any other publication. If it is still legible, the photocopy of the card at TRT carries the text; the sound recording is on disc 1107, together with Ayan's three other pieces, in the archive of the former Ankara State Conservatory.

Story

The sources say nothing about whom Ayan took this poem of counsel from, or at which gatherings in the village the deyiş was sung.

Musical Features

The catalogue says nothing at all about scale, rhythm, range or manner of performance, and no notation of the melody was ever made.

Performers and Recordings

This recording, the only performance we have, was taken after "Hoş Geldiniz", "Biz Dinî Batıl" and "Bülbül", which Ayan sang in that order; judging by their first lines, the four reach toward different subjects: welcoming a guest, defending one's faith, addressing a sorrowful nightingale, and here, not trusting the world. The details and single line of one of Ayan's recordings are given separately on the Biz Dinî Batıl page. After Ayan the team recorded Hüseyin Kılıç's songs in the same village, one of which entered the TRT repertoire as İnce Çayır Biçilmez. The general framework of the deyiş and folk songs collected in the villages of Amasya is drawn in The Melody of Yeşilırmak.

Bibliography

Online sources