The line "On sekiz bin âlem yaradılmadan" opens its account in the time before creation. Of the deyiş that the minstrel Aşir Kirpiksiz sang for the collectors in Merzifon on 8 July 1943, this opening line is all that has come down to us. The âşık from the village of Karamağra gave the team five pieces that day; On Sekiz Bin Âlem is one of them and opens side B of disc 1124. It has no counterpart in the TRT repertoire, and its full text and notation have never made their way into print.

Catalogue Data

  • Repertoire no.: none; not registered under the Amasya region in the TRT repertoire
  • Place and date of collection: Merzifon (in square brackets in the catalogue), 8 July 1943
  • Source person: the âşık Aşir Kirpiksiz; year of birth on the card Rumi 1326, from the village of Karamağra in Merzifon; "saz" in square brackets in the instrument column
  • Collected by: Ankara State Conservatory; Halil Bedii Yönetken, Muzaffer Sarısözen, Rıza Yetişen
  • Published source: Celal Volkan Kaya, Ankara Devlet Konservatuvarı'nın Halk Müziği Alan Araştırmaları Kataloğu (İTÜ, 2014), recording list no. 3669
  • Location in the archive: former Folklore Archive of the Ankara State Conservatory, disc 1124/B-1; the archive is now at the State Conservatory of Hacettepe University
  • Genre: deyiş
  • Mode, rhythm: not written on the card
  • Lyrics and music: no poet's name in the title; recorded as anonymous
  • Source link: there is no TRT entry; the details are in Kaya's catalogue thesis

Lyrics

The line given in the catalogue for this recording is as follows:

On sekiz bin âlem yaradılmadan

"On sekiz bin âlem", the eighteen thousand worlds, is an expression of the old religious and Sufi language for the whole of creation; the line ("Before the eighteen thousand worlds were created") recalls the time when none of these beings yet existed. Since the rest was not carried over from the card into the catalogue, we do not know where the deyiş took this beginning. In recordings of minstrel poetry the poet's name was often written in the title field of the card; where it was not, Kaya added the name to the title himself on the strength of the pen name in the words. The title of this recording carries no name, either from the card or from the cataloguer. The deyiş as a whole lives on only as sound: words and melody alike are on disc 1124, and the disc is in the Folklore Archive handed over to Hacettepe; no printed source carries either. Kaya writes that the archive was closed to use while he was preparing his catalogue, so that he could work only from the copies of the cards held at TRT.

Story

On the question of whom Kirpiksiz had the deyiş from, and at which gatherings it was sung, both the card and the printed sources are silent. The titles of the other pieces he sang that day, however, show the direction of his repertoire: a "Geyik Avı", "İptida Dünyaya", which begins with the line "İbtida dünyaya mektep gurulmadan", "Bilbil", and "Dik Delil Makamı", explained on the card as "Tarikatın Dik Delili". The last title documents, in the catalogue's own words, that Kirpiksiz was an âşık who also knew the melodies of the dervish orders.

Musical Features

In Kaya's list of performers, the instrument column shows only the instrument a person used in the collection recording. In Kirpiksiz's entry "saz" is written in this column, but the word is placed in square brackets; the catalogue thus records that the âşık recorded with a saz, without stating in which pieces. A comparison is useful at this point: on the card of "İptida Dünyaya", which comes immediately afterwards on the disc, it is noted that a violin was played, and Kaya writes that the violin may have been played by Rasim Olgun or Turabi Tanrısever from the village of Sarı. The card of On Sekiz Bin Âlem is silent about instruments. No published analysis exists of the mode, rhythm or range of the deyiş.

Performers and Recordings

The only known performance is Kirpiksiz's. Side A of disc 1124 received, on the same day, Rüstem Coşar's recordings of "Engin Hüseynî (En Eski Tarikat Makamı)" and "Kandilli Kerem", while on side B the deyiş is followed by "Yol Havası (Yürütme)", played by the Merzifon zurna and drum pair Keleş and Duran. Three recordings from the âşık's session of 8 July are described on separate pages: Geyik Avı, Bilbil and Dik Delil Makamı. The place of voices such as Kirpiksiz's among the province's melodies is described in The Melody of Yeşilırmak.

Bibliography

Online sources