The first word in the name of this halay could not be read with certainty by the cataloguer: Celal Volkan Kaya gives it as "Saz(?) Halayı", with a question mark showing his doubt about the reading. If the reading is right, an odd situation arises, for those who played the tune onto disc were two men from Merzifon who played not the saz but the zurna and the drum: Osman Keleş on zurna, Hüseyin Duran on davul. One of the nine tunes the pair played for the conservatory team in the summer of 1943, Saz(?) Halayı has no place in the TRT repertoire and no printed notation.

Catalogue Data

  • Repertoire no.: none; not registered under the Amasya region in the TRT repertoire
  • Players: Osman Keleş (zurna; zurna player, year of birth on the card Rumi 1330) and Hüseyin Duran (davul; drummer, year of birth on the card Rumi 1331), both from the village of Kızıleğrek in the Türnük subdistrict of Merzifon
  • Place and date of collection: Merzifon, 8 July 1943; both in square brackets, the cataloguer's completion
  • Collected by: Halil Bedii Yönetken, Muzaffer Sarısözen, Rıza Yetişen (Ankara State Conservatory)
  • Published source: Celal Volkan Kaya, Ankara Devlet Konservatuvarı'nın Halk Müziği Alan Araştırmaları Kataloğu (İTÜ, 2014), no. 3676
  • Location in the archive: Folklore Archive, disc 1126/A-2
  • Genre: halay, instrumental dance tune
  • Mode, rhythm: not recorded
  • Music: anonymous
  • Source link: there is no TRT link; the details are in Kaya's catalogue

Lyrics

The card has no line of words; the halay was left to the zurna and the drum. With no printed notation either, the only known record of the melody is the recording on side A of disc 1126 in the Folklore Archive. The disc passed, with the rest of the archive, to the State Conservatory of Hacettepe University.

Story

The nine recordings of Keleş and Duran share one documented feature: in none of them did the place and date pass into the catalogue in the form written on the card. Kaya corrected or completed this information by looking at the course of the trip and the sequence of the disc numbers, and gave all of it in square brackets. In the list of performers, too, the year and place at which the two were recorded are given as "[1943], [Merzifon]", with the same brackets. Where the name of this halay comes from, or at which wedding and festival grounds in Merzifon it was danced, is told neither on the card nor in any publication.

Musical Features

The pair's repertoire contains three separate halay titles: "Çerkes Halayı", "Kürt Halayı (Ağırlama – Yanlama – Yeldirme)" and this Saz(?) Halayı. The title of the Kürt Halayı also lists the sections of the dance; the title of Saz(?) Halayı contains no such division. The scale and rhythm of the tune were not written on the card. Since Kaya's instrument column records only the instruments used in the recording, what is heard on the disc is Keleş's zurna and Duran's drum.

Performers and Recordings

The nine recordings of Keleş and Duran in the catalogue are: Çerkes Halayı, Gelin Ağlatma, Bıçak(?) Oyun Havası, Yol Havası (Karşılama), Yol Havası (Yürütme), Saz(?) Halayı, Güreş (Dönmesi – Kapışması), Kürt Halayı and Üç Ayak. On disc 1126 the halay is preceded by Divan (Bektaşiler), sung by Ali Baki Gül, and followed by İbrahim Elmas's recording of Bülbül: Bugün Pir Divanına Vardım; in the last section of the disc the pair play again and give the wrestling tune. The halay is known from no recording other than the pair's playing that summer. The tunes of the Merzifon zurna players fall, with the rest of the province's melodies, within the scope of The Melody of Yeşilırmak.

Bibliography

Online sources