Sung in the voice of a young man with a basket on his arm, worn out almost to fainting in the tobacco fields, "Merzifon Yollarında" (On the Roads of Merzifon) is a recent song whose words and tune are both by Âşık Erdal Denk. The two men who heard it from the composer's own lips and put it into notation were Erkan Demirtaş and Berkay Gençer; their work was part of the CultureCIVIC Culture and Arts Support Programme, run with European Union support. The song never entered the TRT Turkish folk music repertoire, and its Repertükül archive number, 2095, has nothing to do with TRT's numbering.

Catalogue Data

  • Archive no.: Repertükül archive 2095 (outside the TRT repertoire)
  • Region: Amasya, Merzifon
  • Source person: none listed separately; the piece was taken from the composer, who is also the performer
  • Collected and notated by: Erkan Demirtaş, Berkay Gençer
  • Date of collection: not given in the record
  • Collection framework: CultureCIVIC Culture and Arts Support Programme, funded by the European Union
  • Modal scale: Hicaz; final and closing note A (La)
  • Rhythm: 9/8
  • Range: A to F, six notes
  • Subject: love and longing
  • Words and music: Âşık Erdal Denk
  • Source link: since the piece is not in the TRT repertoire, its details, notation data and lyrics can be read in the Repertükül record.

Lyrics

The words belong to a minstrel known by name, and the recording came straight from him. Since no date of death has been published for Erdal Denk, the text had to be treated as under copyright; only the first quatrain is therefore given below, and the whole can be read in the Repertükül record listed in the catalogue data.

Merzifon yollarında
Sepet var kollarında
Yoruldum öleyazdım
Tütün tarlalarında

"On the roads of Merzifon, a basket on the arm; I grew so tired I nearly died in the tobacco fields." After the quatrain the last two lines return once more, changed to "I fainted, I nearly died." In the following stanzas the speaker tells of threading tobacco and asks whom all this labour is for: he could not marry the one he loved, and his torment never ends. In the last stanza he has hung the tobacco on the salaç row after row, fallen asleep from exhaustion, and asks his beloved to forgive him. A salaç is the rack on which threaded tobacco leaves are hung to dry; "öleyazmak" means to come close to dying. Love and field labour meet in the same weariness.

Story

There is no published account of when or on what occasion the song was written. The collection data give no date, and the empty source-person field shows that the recording was taken directly from the composer himself. The piece therefore has a known author; it was written within the living minstrel tradition of Merzifon and cannot be placed alongside the anonymous songs handed down through generations.

Musical Features

The tune uses the Hicaz scale and settles on A. Its rhythm is the nine-beat asymmetric 9/8. The lowest note is A and the highest F, so the melody moves within a range of six notes. No separate published analysis of the notation was found; these values come from the record's details.

Performers and Recordings

What exists is the single performance behind the notation: Erdal Denk singing his own song. Other pieces with tunes by Âşık Erdal Denk were collected in Merzifon under the same programme; "Muhammed Ali'yi Candan Sevenler", sung to words by Shah Hatâyî, is one of them. The sources give no information on later performers or on a published album.

To see these new Merzifon songs alongside the province's whole repertoire: The Melody of Yeşilırmak.

Bibliography

Online sources