The line that reached the card opens with a question that turns away from both the world's sorrow and its finery: "Neyneyim şu dünyanın gamı zinneti". Bektaş Yıldız of the village of Akpınar in Gümüşhacıköy sang the piece to his saz on 9 July 1943. Its title is in two parts: "Neykerim" is the piece's own name, while "Bozuḫ" in parentheses looks like an addition stating its type or the way it was played. No other line of it, nor any notation or analysis, is known.

Catalogue Data

  • Repertoire no.: none; not found in the Amasya section of the TRT repertoire
  • Source person: Bektaş Yıldız (saz; born Rumi 1312, i.e. 1896-1897; farmhand; Gümüşhacıköy, Hamamözü subdistrict, village of Akpınar)
  • Place and date of collection: Gümüşhacıköy, 9 July 1943 (place in square brackets in the catalogue)
  • Collected by: Halil Bedii Yönetken, Muzaffer Sarısözen, Rıza Yetişen (Ankara State Conservatory)
  • Genre: "Bozuḫ" on the card; classed as a long song (bozlak)
  • Mode, rhythm: not recorded
  • Words and music: registered as anonymous
  • Location in the archive: Folklore Archive, disc 1132/B-2
  • Source publication and link: Kaya's catalogue, no. 3701; full text of the thesis. There is no TRT link

Lyrics

Neyneyim şu dünyanın gamı zinneti

In today's language the line may be understood as "What shall I do with this world's sorrow and its finery"; that the spelling "zinnet" stands for "ziynet", meaning ornament, follows from the flow of the sense but is not certain. "Neykerim" in the title and "Neyneyim" in the line look like two different pronunciations of the question "what shall I do". The recording is in the Folklore Archive of the former Ankara State Conservatory, second on side B of disc 1132.

Story

From whom the piece was learned, or on what occasion it was sung, is not recorded. The notes column of the list of performers keeps a single detail about the singer himself: Yıldız learned the saz from Hacı Ali of his village, and Hacı Ali was no longer alive in 1943. This detail concerns the handing down of the saz; it does not say whether the words or the melody of "Neykerim" also came from the same master.

Musical Features

The catalogue, which gives no mode or metre, makes two brief observations on Bektaş Yıldız's saz in the appendix where it gathers notes on instruments: its tuning is "bozuk tertip", and "the frets fit the bozuk intervals exactly". Tempting as it is to connect the "Bozuḫ" of the title with these notes, the catalogue does not make the connection; that the piece was played in the bozuk tuning remains a possibility. Side A of the disc holds Yıldız's songs "Fadimem" and "Toḫadıñ Mezerliği", and side B first "Karadağ Üstüne Ismarladım", then this piece.

Performers and Recordings

For Neykerim there is only the 1943 recording. "Toḫadıñ Mezerliği", which Yıldız sang onto the same disc, was taken into the TRT repertoire as Tokat'ın Mezerliği. His divan that opens the next disc, Beni Bir Dost Yareledi, and Bozuh, taken from Osman Atmaca on the same day, are described on separate pages of the site; the latter also discusses the other uses of the name "bozuk" in the catalogue. The place of the long songs among the region's melodies is touched on in The Melody of Yeşilırmak.

Bibliography

Online sources