On the card, beside Rıza Fırıncı, who sang this deyiş, there is a second performer whose name was not written down: the collectors noted that a violin was played in the recording but did not record who the violinist was. In his catalogue Celal Volkan Kaya marks this gap with a question mark, and in a footnote states that the violin must have been played by one of two musicians from the village of Sarı, Rasim Olgun or Turabi Tanrısever. Both the title and the first line of the deyiş, recorded in Merzifon between 7 and 8 July 1943, were read by the cataloguer only with difficulty, and several of their words are given with question marks. It has no place in the TRT repertoire, and its words and notation have not been published.

Catalogue Data

  • Repertoire no.: none; not registered under the Amasya region in the TRT repertoire
  • Place of collection: Merzifon (in square brackets in the catalogue)
  • Date of collection: "07/08.07.1943" on the card
  • Source person: Rıza Fırıncı; farmer, year of birth on the card Rumi 1319, from the village of Belvar in Merzifon; instrument column empty
  • Accompaniment: a violinist whose name is not written on the card (according to Kaya, Rasim Olgun or Turabi Tanrısever)
  • Collected by: the Ankara State Conservatory team of Halil Bedii Yönetken, Muzaffer Sarısözen and Rıza Yetişen
  • Published source: Celal Volkan Kaya, Ankara Devlet Konservatuvarı'nın Halk Müziği Alan Araştırmaları Kataloğu (İTÜ, 2014), no. 3658, footnote 94
  • Location in the archive: Folklore Archive, disc 1121/A-2
  • Genre: deyiş
  • Mode, rhythm: not stated
  • Lyrics: by Seyrânî according to the title; music anonymous
  • Source link: there is no TRT entry; the details are in Kaya's thesis

Lyrics

The title and first line in the catalogue read as follows:

Sanihati(?) Seyranî'den: Gavsi(?) gametimin fehmeyle fendin

The cataloguer places a question mark in brackets beside words whose reading he could not be sure of; in this recording both the first word of the title and the first word of the line are marked in this way. To give the line a meaning in present-day Turkish would therefore be a guess built on words of uncertain reading. What is certain is that the poet's name is on the card. Where a minstrel's name was not written on the card, Kaya adds it to the title himself on the strength of the pen name and shows this with square brackets; here the words "Seyranî'den" ("from Seyrânî") are without brackets, which means they came from the collectors' own hand. The catalogue does not explain which Seyrânî this is. Neither the full text of the deyiş nor its melody has been printed; the sound is in the second recording on side A of disc 1121.

Story

The writing of the date with two days, "07/08", carries a clue about the moment of recording: Kaya writes that he found dates in this form throughout the field trips, and that they most probably refer to the night joining one day to the next. By what route the deyiş reached Merzifon, and from whom Fırıncı learned it, finds no answer in the printed sources. Since the card for the first section of side A is not among the copies at TRT, what was recorded before Fırıncı's deyiş is unknown.

Musical Features

The violin accompaniment is the only known musical feature of the recording. The same note, in the same words, appears on the cards of two more recordings in Merzifon: Aşir Kirpiksiz's "İptida Dünyaya" and Rıza Sağlam's "Yayla Makamı". In all three, Kaya considers the violinist to be one of the same two names. Rasim Olgun and Turabi Tanrısever were both from the village of Sarı in Merzifon, and on 7 July, as a quartet with Tahsin Olgun's clarinet and Muharrem Coşkun's tef, they played five tunes for the team. No instrument is entered for Fırıncı himself in the list of performers; it appears that he sang the deyiş and that the violin accompanied him. Mode and rhythm were not entered on the card.

Performers and Recordings

This is Fırıncı's only recording in the catalogue. The name Seyrânî also turns up in other provinces in the conservatory collections: in 1941 in Niğde a "Seyraniden Bir Koşma" was recorded with an unbracketed title, while in 1946 on the Gökbelen plateau a "Yakım (Ağıt)" was recorded with the note "[Seyranî'den]" added by the cataloguer in square brackets. Side B of the same disc opens, again dated "07/08", with Musa Aslan's recording of "Kırklar Zamahı"; from Aslan's Merzifon session, Dem Be Dem Karşıma Gelen Bülbül and Gökyüzünde Bölük Bölük Turnalar are described on separate pages. For one of the tunes played by the violinists Rasim Olgun and Turabi Tanrısever, see the page Hanköy Havası. To follow the trail of deyiş attributed to minstrels in Amasya, one can begin with The Melody of Yeşilırmak.

Bibliography

Online sources