The song opens with the stones of a bridge: "Kuşköprünün ufacıkdır taşları." In Amasya, one of the local names of the Kunç Bridge over the Yeşilırmak is Kuş Köprü; the card does not say whether the bridge in the line is this structure. Mustafa Saçlı sang it on 4 July 1943, the day the team arrived in Amasya and began recording. The song has no place in the TRT repertoire, and there is no printed copy of its words or notation.

Catalogue Data

  • Repertoire no.: none; not registered under the Amasya region in the TRT repertoire
  • Place and date of collection: central Amasya, 4 July 1943 (the place is in square brackets in the catalogue)
  • Source person: Mustafa Saçlı; in the list of performers his occupation is farmer, his home central Amasya
  • Collected by: the Ankara State Conservatory 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. 3578
  • Location in the archive: Folklore Archive, disc 1105/B-4
  • Genre: folk song (türkü)
  • Mode, rhythm: not recorded
  • Words and music: anonymous
  • Source link: there is no TRT link; the details are in Kaya's catalogue

Lyrics

Kuşköprünün ufacıkdır taşları

"Ufacıkdır" means are tiny; the line reads "The stones of Kuşköprü are tiny." Where this opening with the bridge's small stones leads is unknown, because the rest of the song has never been printed anywhere. Kaya's catalogue gives only the first line. Saçlı's voice is on side B of disc 1105. Both the disc and the original card are in the Folklore Archive that was transferred to Hacettepe University; in 2014, when Kaya published his catalogue, the archive was closed to researchers. A copy of the card is at TRT.

As for the place name, the site's article on the historical bridges of Amasya relates that the Kunç Bridge is also known as Künç Köprü and Kuş Köprü, and that there is no document on the origin of the name Kuş Köprü.

Collections and Variants

The list of Amasya folk songs published by Haluk Yücel in 2018 includes a song called "“Kuş Köprü” başının gülleri", "the roses at the head of Kuş Köprü". Yücel gives no source person, place of collection or words for this song; its name appears only in his tables of genres and rhythms. It therefore cannot be determined whether it is the same song as the 1943 recording: one mentions the bridge's stones, the other the roses at the bridge's end, and it is possible both that they are different lines of one song and that they are separate songs.

Story

Whether some event at the bridge gave rise to the song, and whose hand it came from, are matters the printed sources do not touch.

Musical Features

Its scale, rhythm and range are unknown. Its place on the disc, however, is clear: it is the last of the four recordings on side B of 1105.

Performers and Recordings

Mustafa Saçlı is introduced in the note added to the list of performers as one of "the most famous and accomplished musicians of Amasya". He sang two songs for the team that day. "Höngül Höngül: Kız pınar başında testi doldurur", recorded just before this song on the same side of the disc, passed into the TRT repertoire as Kız Pınar Başında Testi Doldurur and has kept Saçlı's name alive as its source person. For the Kuşköprü song, by contrast, no recording can be pointed to beyond Saçlı's disc. For the songs of the city of Amasya in general, turn to The Melody of Yeşilırmak.

Bibliography

Online sources