In the catalogue, where the first line of this recording should be, there are only three dots: "Segah: …". Celal Volkan Kaya uses this sign for information he could not read because the collection cards had faded; in other words, the words of the piece that Zekeriya Demiray sang in Amasya on 6 July 1943 were written on the card, but they cannot be read in the copy available to the cataloguer. The title carries the name of segâh, one of the well-known modes of Turkish music. The melody was not taken into the TRT repertoire; neither its words nor its notation have been printed.

Catalogue Data

  • Repertoire no.: none; not registered under the Amasya region in the TRT repertoire
  • Source person: Zekeriya Demiray; head of a village office, year of birth on the card Rumi 1323, from central Amasya; no instrument recorded for him
  • Place and date of collection: Amasya (place in square brackets), 6 July 1943
  • 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, no. 3638
  • Location in the archive: Folklore Archive, disc 1116/B-2
  • Genre: long song (uzun hava)
  • Mode, rhythm: the name refers to the segâh mode; rhythm not recorded
  • Lyrics and music: anonymous
  • Source link: there is no TRT page; the details are in Kaya's thesis

Lyrics

Not a single legible word passed from the card into the catalogue; three dots stand where the line should be. It is this sign that shows the words existed, because Kaya marks information wholly missing from a card with a question mark, not with three dots. There is no printed text to restore the faded lines, and no notation to show the melody. The card itself lies among the photocopies of the Amasya cards kept at TRT; the sound is on disc 1116 of the Folklore Archive, which was handed over to the State Conservatory of Hacettepe University.

Story

The list of performers introduces Zekeriya Demiray with a few details: his occupation is given as "köy bürosu şefi", head of a village office, his year of birth is Rumi 1323, and he was from central Amasya. He sang a total of six pieces for the conservatory team on two separate days, 4 and 6 July. From whom he learned Segah, or where he sang it, appears neither in the list nor on the card, and no account attached to the melody has been published.

Musical Features

The name shows that the melody was associated with the segâh mode; beyond this the card says nothing about scale, rhythm or range. The disc number, on the other hand, points to a confusion. Side A of disc 1116 opens with "Kür Gırağı", sung by Demiray; since the cards for the two sections that follow are not among the TRT copies, their contents are unknown. Segah is in the second section of side B. The same number was also written for the "Gelin Ağlatma" recorded two days later in Merzifon from the zurna player Keleş and the drummer Duran, and Kaya puts a question mark beside that recording's number. According to Kaya's explanation, the team later reused discs with space left at the end for short recordings; the card does not explain how the two recordings came to share the same number.

Performers and Recordings

Demiray's recordings that went onto disc are, in order: on 4 July Irmakların Gümbürtüsü and Kaleden Atılır; on 6 July Dımbıla Gız, Bayatı (Atüstü Bayatı), "Kür Gırağı" and Segah. Segah is the last piece in this series, and the team's recordings in central Amasya also close with it; the next day the work moved to Merzifon. The Gelin Ağlatma recording from Merzifon is also described separately. No published source mentions a performance of Segah other than Demiray's. The place of long songs of the kind Demiray sang within the province is among the subjects of the article The Melody of Yeşilırmak.

Bibliography

Online sources