"Aramızı garlı dağlar alupdur": the only line of the koşma that reached the card measures the distance between two people in snowy mountains. The title ties the poem to a poet named Nûrî. The singer is Osman Çevikçe of Amasya; the year of birth on his card is Rumi 1292, that is, 1876-1877, his occupation is written as "hoca", and when he sang for the conservatory team on 6 July 1943 he was in his late sixties. The koşma is the first piece he put on disc that day.

Catalogue Data

  • Repertoire no.: none; not registered under the Amasya region in the TRT repertoire
  • Source person: Osman Çevikçe (saz; born Rumi 1292, i.e. 1876-1877; hoca; central Amasya; learned the saz from Âşık Bedrî of Erbaa)
  • Place and date of collection: Amasya, 6 July 1943 (place in square brackets in the catalogue)
  • Collected by: Halil Bedii Yönetken, Muzaffer Sarısözen and the technician Rıza Yetişen (Ankara State Conservatory)
  • Genre: koşma (deyiş)
  • Mode, rhythm: not recorded
  • Words and music: words by Nûrî according to the title; melody registered as anonymous
  • Location in the archive: Folklore Archive, disc 1113/A-1
  • Source publication and link: Kaya's catalogue, no. 3620; full text of the thesis. There is no TRT link

Lyrics

Aramızı garlı dağlar alupdur

In English: "Snowy mountains have come between us." "Garlı" is "karlı" (snowy) and "alupdur" is "almıştır" as they reached the card in their spoken forms. The rest of the poem is not in the catalogue and was not found in any other publication. "Nuriden" in the title gives the poet's name; as Kaya explains, such a name was either written by the collectors in the title field of the card or drawn from the pen name in the words and added by Kaya himself. Who this Nûrî was, however, and in which century he lived, cannot be learned from the card; as the poet's identity is uncertain, only the first line from the card is given here.

Story

How the koşma came to be made is unknown; the singer's line of masters, by contrast, is plainly written on the card: Çevikçe learned to play the saz from Âşık Bedrî of Erbaa, and Bedrî is named as one of the apprentices of Emrah of Erzurum. At the same session Çevikçe also sang a "Kalenderi" whose title bears Emrah's name ("Sofi meclise hele diñle bu sazı"). That this kalenderi, attributed to Emrah, his master's master, was in his repertoire fits that line; by what route the Nûrî koşma reached Çevikçe, however, the catalogue does not say.

Musical Features

Çevikçe used his saz in the recording; the mode and metre, however, are unknown. Side A of disc 1113 opens with this koşma, followed by Çevikçe's "Garip Makamı". Third comes the "Çerkes Halayı" of Osman Keleş and Hüseyin Duran of Merzifon, which appears to have been played two days later; side B begins again with Çevikçe's "Kalenderi". A general note of Kaya's says that space left over on discs was later used for short recordings; how the order on this particular disc came about he does not explain.

Performers and Recordings

The koşma appears on no recording other than Çevikçe's 1943 disc. Neither this koşma nor Çevikçe's other two recordings entered the Amasya section of the TRT repertoire; the site does not yet have a published page on the pieces this singer recorded to which a link could be made. The melodies of Amasya intertwined with the minstrel tradition are described together with the other folk songs and long songs in The Melody of Yeşilırmak.

Bibliography

Online sources